drnuncheon's Online Story Hour (now playing: Of Sound Mind)
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drnuncheon
Explorer
Caliber said:Although, like Ahoke, I am wanting to smash some heads here. Wheres the killing?!?
Putcher feet up and get comfortable, it may take a while.
J
drnuncheon
Explorer
Ahoke leaps backward like a scalded cat, her axe coming up in front of her defensively. "What?!? That is /not/ supposed to happen."
Sen-Jyu turns several shades of pale at seeing this abominable choir, and takes several steps back, katana held in between two shaking hands. Panicked, he looks at his companions, though he looks as if he might bolt.
Harvester speaks succinctly, his feelings apparent as he shifts his scythe into readiness.
The screams continue: rasping, bubbling, shrill - setting your teeth on edge and no doubt warning whatever lurks in the darkness beyond.
Sen-Jyu lunges forward with a frenzied look in his eyes, striking at the heads with several quick slashes of his katana.
Harvester raises his scythe on high, and begins to slice the heads apart.
Ahoke grabs her great club and begins to smash one of the thanork heads.
Ahoke's club comes down on the thanork head, crushing it beneath the heavy wood. Ichida-sama licks out beside it like a silver flame, silencing the other thanork, but the twin blows have knocked the elven head from its precarious perch atop the pile. It rolls a few feet further down the corridor, the scream continuing unabated.
Harvester's startlement is so severe that the wickedly curved blade of the scythe swings wildly, snapping the hairs atop the short dwarf's head in the back-swing, and brushing Sen-Jyu's cheek as it comes around.
Sen-Jyu turns on his companion and the blade that came close to cutting his head from his shoulders. The katana is positioned at the ready as he attempts to assess whether or not the Harvester has gone mad.
Ahoke chases after the rolling head, and crushes it brutally. "Shut /up!/" she screams at it. And it obeys.
Harvester looks at Sen-Jyu and Ahoke apologetically. "Erm... Sorry. My hand slipped.... yeah, that's it."
Ahoke turns back around. "We had best take up strategic positions. Our element of surprise is gone."
Sen-Jyu lowers his katana ever-so-slowly, keeping an eye on the Harvester all the while. "As thankful as I am to your god's support of our endeavors, I don't want to shake His hand."
Silence once more reigns over the mine - except for the constant drip of water. Three corridors continue from the intersection - ahead, left, and right. The light reveals that the corridor ahead continues past the range of the spell, while the others both open into larger spaces at the very edge of the glow.
Harvester shrugs a shoulder. "Today or tomorrow, Sen, He does not care..." The priest walks towards the elven head and lifts it by the long hair as he moves back. He mumbles to himself.
Ahoke looks at the other two. "Do we hide in the darkness and hope to ambush them, or do we proceed down the corridor and hope they ambush us?" She doesn't sound like she really cares, either way.
Sen-Jyu sighs heavily as his nerves painfully uncoil from being tauntly wound. "I'm busy both days," he rasps as he returns to facing forward, Ichido-sama agreeing silently as its edge winks in the light.
Ahoke steps to one side of the cavern so that she's at least not run over by a herd of thanork while the others make up their minds.
Harvester plucks something from the elven head before casting the head aside. "In darkness, I cannot see. 'They' might well slit my throat before I knew they were there." He bends down to inspect the thanork heads.
"At this point," Sen-Jyu says with deadly earnest, "I would rather resolve this. They can outwait us."
Ahoke shrugs. "There's three choices, then. Whch direction shall we go in?"
Sen-Jyu nods in the left direction. "No harm in starting there and doubling back if we're wrong."
Ahoke starts sniffing the air, suspiciously. She glances to the right, narrowing her eyes. "Something's over here..."
Sen-Jyu turns to the right and, presumably, toward what Ahoke's referring to. "Something moving?" he asks in a breath that could scarcely be discerned from a passing breeze.
Ahoke sniffs the air again, frowning. "Korhorrag. In the same place as thanork?" She sounds puzzled. Glancing at Sen-Jyu, she blinks. "Huh? Oh, no. I smell them."
Harvester's attention is diverted towards Ahoke, "Eh? What's that?" He winces as a hand reaches up to his left ear for a moment. "Ow. Damn."
Ahoke grumbles. "Remember those undead lizard things that we saw? That's a korhorrag. Except that they're not usually undead."
Sen-Jyu murmurs matter-of-factly, "I find the undead to be extremely irritating."
Harvester gives a cursory scan across the ground, "Korhorrag? And is that what you noticed here?" He moves nearer the dwarf, and says to Sen-Jyu, "Irritating? Nah. Just abominable, is all."
Ahoke nods, seeming to agree with his assessment. "Yes. So do we try a different corridor that doesn't have korhorrag, or do we make the assumption that it's all related somehow? I'll bet that it is, in some way..."
Sen-Jyu shakes his head at Harvester. "Yes, they're blemishes on all that is hale and benign in the world. But they -irritate- me."
Harvester gestures Ahoke forward. "You've done good leading us through this maze so far. Keep a-goin."
Sen-Jyu pauses. "Could it be that the thanork tracks that we found -leaving- were those of undead thanork?"
Harvester considers, "Mmmmmmmmaybe. We can ask when we see them?"
Ahoke makes a noncommital grunt, but says, "I want to see what the races are doing living together." She veers off towards the right hand tunnel. "Anything's possible. Undead thanork. What /is/ this world coming to?" She sighs heavily, as if the weight of it is all on her shoulders. "Well, let's go find out."
"Mmmmm," agrees Sen-Jyu, unusually happy with this idea. Maybe it's just the 'moving forward' bit.
Harvester murmurs, answering Ahoke's question softly, "The world is coming to it's end... and a new beginning..."
Ahoke mmphs in response. "Yeah, alright," she says. "You're the god person." She sighs. "I just kill when wolverine tells me to."
Harvester follows his companions into the darkness, and attempts to calm his nerves.
The tunnel is short - about twenty feet - and opens up into a large room. The stench of korhorrag is strong here, almost overpowering, a foul odor reminiscent of dead skunk, that twists your stomach into knots. But the korhorrag who exude the foul odor seem not to be present - unless they are the source of the piles of rotting flesh that are almost invisible beneath a carpet of emerald carapaces. As you move closer, the sound of thousands of tiny jaws chewing can be heard. It stops, to be replaced by the scuttling of feet as your presence frightens the beetles away from their feast.
Scattered about the room are the damp-rotted remains of cots and beds, and on the far wall a masterful carving that seems somehow out of place in this abbatoir.
Ahoke looks shocked. "This is... a surprise." She also looks repulsed. "Do you think that these things get up and move around sometimes, or are they really dead?"
Harvester enters slowly, raising the torch on high as he turns to take in the entirety of the scene. He breathes carefully, through his mouth. "Rather.... unpleasant, this..."
Harvester blinks once, and turns again, more quickly. He raises a hand and lowers the torch, head tilted as he listens.
Ahoke nods, sighing. "We're not going to be fighting any of these creatures... unless they /do/ get up again," she adds, looking at them suspiciously. "Are they? Surely not, if they're being eaten..."
Harvester hisses, "Did you hear that?"
The piles are no longer even recognizable as creatures.
Ahoke looks back at Harvester, shaking her head. "What is it?" she whispers.
"Being eaten never stopped anyone from getting up again. I've seen more than one meal come up once mo..." Sen-Jyu stops at Harvester's hiss, falling silent and alert.
Harvester moves nearer to his companions. "I heard my name," speaks the cleric, softly. "And then I thought I heard Waterman saying I was 'strange'... his voice trailed away..."
"Visions... er, listens, from your god?" asks Sen-Jyu gently.
Harvester looks slowly about, attempting to divine where the voices came from - or if they were only imagined.
Ahoke blinks, and whispers, "Do you think that Waterman is down here?"
Harvester shakes his head slowly. "I do not know... I don't think it was from my Lord, though.... let's look about. Maybe Waterman's near and neck deep in the sh-t." He glances back. "If he is, I intend to see he drowns."
There are two "exits" from the room besides the one you came in through: a well along the southern wall, and a tiny vertical crevice on the east - too narrow for even a thanork to fit down. Taking a closer look, it seems as if the rock directly above the crevice has been carved into a crude seat, making for a stone garderobe.
Ahoke smirks at the garderobe. "Do you want to see if he's neck deep in sh-t?"
Aside from that, the only feature of note are the piles of flesh and the carving on the back wall.
Sen-Jyu begins to move toward the carving on the back wall, though he doesn't go out of the range of the light. "Come with me, please?" he asks of the Harvester, gesturing to the carving.
Harvester snorts at Ahoke, then moves to inspect the carving briefly. "Doubt he is, but I'll look in a sec." He turns, to Sen-Jyu and grins, having had the same thought. He continues to speak softly, to Ahoke, "Can you see where that goes?" He gestures south.
Ahoke looks at Harvester as if he's crazy. "It's a well... it goes down."
The carving is a triptych: three panels on the wall. From left to right, it portrays: a graceful dragon gazing beneficiently over dozens of man working happily in the mine; men working in a forge, smelting ore and forming goods from the copper - including bells; and last, the men presenting these offerings to the dragon by placing them in an enormous fiery bowl, while the creature looks on in pleasure.
Ahoke walks over to the well, looking it over carefully, to make sure that there aren't any undead thanork crawling out of it.
Harvester murmurs to Sen-Jyu, grinning as Ahoke checks the well, "See anything here, Sen?"
Ahoke adds, "Yeah, it's a well. There's rushing water underneath it." She moves away, walking back to the center of the room. "You know, it smells bad in here. Let's get out."
Sen-Jyu runs his fingers over the carving's topology, caressing its curves adoringly. "This means something..." he whispers to himself, then looks back at the Harvester. "No."
Ahoke frowns. "I've killed these creatures before. Every one that I've ever encountered has had bones." She gestures at her bone armor. Some of this is crafted from such a creature.."
Harvester whispers softly, "Skeletons... animated?" He glances at Ahoke and begins to move towards the rotting flesh, then pauses. "Finished, Sen? or shall I wait?"
Looking a bit glassy-eyed, Sen-Jyu says, "I'm... finished, thank you." He turns to smile at his two companions, then looks quizzical at their frowning faces. "Something wrong?"
Ahoke gestures at the pile of flesh. "Yes. These things generally have bones."
"... and they don't?" comes Sen-Jyu's next question.
Harvester nods once, then moves to the rotten meat, and pokes with the haft of his scythe. "These all lizard and thanork, or...."
Ahoke shrugs. "Let's go see if there's anything elsewhere. And no, these don't."
Harvester nods in agreement with Ahoke, "Yeah, they do. I wonder if they've been made walking skeletons..." He moves to the garderobe, briefly, and shines his torch in.
"Hmm. Sounds like something is bone-collecting and these are the discarded piles. Either that, or the beetles are able to chew through bone." Sen-Jyu shrugs, oddly calm to the revelation.
Harvester shrugs, and turns to walk out with the dwarf. "He ain't there," he remarks softly. He pauses to look back in.
Ahoke nods, leaving the way that she came.
Sen-Jyu follows behind the other two, gazing one more time at the triptych.
Sen-Jyu turns several shades of pale at seeing this abominable choir, and takes several steps back, katana held in between two shaking hands. Panicked, he looks at his companions, though he looks as if he might bolt.
Harvester speaks succinctly, his feelings apparent as he shifts his scythe into readiness.
The screams continue: rasping, bubbling, shrill - setting your teeth on edge and no doubt warning whatever lurks in the darkness beyond.
Sen-Jyu lunges forward with a frenzied look in his eyes, striking at the heads with several quick slashes of his katana.
Harvester raises his scythe on high, and begins to slice the heads apart.
Ahoke grabs her great club and begins to smash one of the thanork heads.
Ahoke's club comes down on the thanork head, crushing it beneath the heavy wood. Ichida-sama licks out beside it like a silver flame, silencing the other thanork, but the twin blows have knocked the elven head from its precarious perch atop the pile. It rolls a few feet further down the corridor, the scream continuing unabated.
Harvester's startlement is so severe that the wickedly curved blade of the scythe swings wildly, snapping the hairs atop the short dwarf's head in the back-swing, and brushing Sen-Jyu's cheek as it comes around.
Sen-Jyu turns on his companion and the blade that came close to cutting his head from his shoulders. The katana is positioned at the ready as he attempts to assess whether or not the Harvester has gone mad.
Ahoke chases after the rolling head, and crushes it brutally. "Shut /up!/" she screams at it. And it obeys.
Harvester looks at Sen-Jyu and Ahoke apologetically. "Erm... Sorry. My hand slipped.... yeah, that's it."
Ahoke turns back around. "We had best take up strategic positions. Our element of surprise is gone."
Sen-Jyu lowers his katana ever-so-slowly, keeping an eye on the Harvester all the while. "As thankful as I am to your god's support of our endeavors, I don't want to shake His hand."
Silence once more reigns over the mine - except for the constant drip of water. Three corridors continue from the intersection - ahead, left, and right. The light reveals that the corridor ahead continues past the range of the spell, while the others both open into larger spaces at the very edge of the glow.
Harvester shrugs a shoulder. "Today or tomorrow, Sen, He does not care..." The priest walks towards the elven head and lifts it by the long hair as he moves back. He mumbles to himself.
Ahoke looks at the other two. "Do we hide in the darkness and hope to ambush them, or do we proceed down the corridor and hope they ambush us?" She doesn't sound like she really cares, either way.
Sen-Jyu sighs heavily as his nerves painfully uncoil from being tauntly wound. "I'm busy both days," he rasps as he returns to facing forward, Ichido-sama agreeing silently as its edge winks in the light.
Ahoke steps to one side of the cavern so that she's at least not run over by a herd of thanork while the others make up their minds.
Harvester plucks something from the elven head before casting the head aside. "In darkness, I cannot see. 'They' might well slit my throat before I knew they were there." He bends down to inspect the thanork heads.
"At this point," Sen-Jyu says with deadly earnest, "I would rather resolve this. They can outwait us."
Ahoke shrugs. "There's three choices, then. Whch direction shall we go in?"
Sen-Jyu nods in the left direction. "No harm in starting there and doubling back if we're wrong."
Ahoke starts sniffing the air, suspiciously. She glances to the right, narrowing her eyes. "Something's over here..."
Sen-Jyu turns to the right and, presumably, toward what Ahoke's referring to. "Something moving?" he asks in a breath that could scarcely be discerned from a passing breeze.
Ahoke sniffs the air again, frowning. "Korhorrag. In the same place as thanork?" She sounds puzzled. Glancing at Sen-Jyu, she blinks. "Huh? Oh, no. I smell them."
Harvester's attention is diverted towards Ahoke, "Eh? What's that?" He winces as a hand reaches up to his left ear for a moment. "Ow. Damn."
Ahoke grumbles. "Remember those undead lizard things that we saw? That's a korhorrag. Except that they're not usually undead."
Sen-Jyu murmurs matter-of-factly, "I find the undead to be extremely irritating."
Harvester gives a cursory scan across the ground, "Korhorrag? And is that what you noticed here?" He moves nearer the dwarf, and says to Sen-Jyu, "Irritating? Nah. Just abominable, is all."
Ahoke nods, seeming to agree with his assessment. "Yes. So do we try a different corridor that doesn't have korhorrag, or do we make the assumption that it's all related somehow? I'll bet that it is, in some way..."
Sen-Jyu shakes his head at Harvester. "Yes, they're blemishes on all that is hale and benign in the world. But they -irritate- me."
Harvester gestures Ahoke forward. "You've done good leading us through this maze so far. Keep a-goin."
Sen-Jyu pauses. "Could it be that the thanork tracks that we found -leaving- were those of undead thanork?"
Harvester considers, "Mmmmmmmmaybe. We can ask when we see them?"
Ahoke makes a noncommital grunt, but says, "I want to see what the races are doing living together." She veers off towards the right hand tunnel. "Anything's possible. Undead thanork. What /is/ this world coming to?" She sighs heavily, as if the weight of it is all on her shoulders. "Well, let's go find out."
"Mmmmm," agrees Sen-Jyu, unusually happy with this idea. Maybe it's just the 'moving forward' bit.
Harvester murmurs, answering Ahoke's question softly, "The world is coming to it's end... and a new beginning..."
Ahoke mmphs in response. "Yeah, alright," she says. "You're the god person." She sighs. "I just kill when wolverine tells me to."
Harvester follows his companions into the darkness, and attempts to calm his nerves.
The tunnel is short - about twenty feet - and opens up into a large room. The stench of korhorrag is strong here, almost overpowering, a foul odor reminiscent of dead skunk, that twists your stomach into knots. But the korhorrag who exude the foul odor seem not to be present - unless they are the source of the piles of rotting flesh that are almost invisible beneath a carpet of emerald carapaces. As you move closer, the sound of thousands of tiny jaws chewing can be heard. It stops, to be replaced by the scuttling of feet as your presence frightens the beetles away from their feast.
Scattered about the room are the damp-rotted remains of cots and beds, and on the far wall a masterful carving that seems somehow out of place in this abbatoir.
Ahoke looks shocked. "This is... a surprise." She also looks repulsed. "Do you think that these things get up and move around sometimes, or are they really dead?"
Harvester enters slowly, raising the torch on high as he turns to take in the entirety of the scene. He breathes carefully, through his mouth. "Rather.... unpleasant, this..."
Harvester blinks once, and turns again, more quickly. He raises a hand and lowers the torch, head tilted as he listens.
Ahoke nods, sighing. "We're not going to be fighting any of these creatures... unless they /do/ get up again," she adds, looking at them suspiciously. "Are they? Surely not, if they're being eaten..."
Harvester hisses, "Did you hear that?"
The piles are no longer even recognizable as creatures.
Ahoke looks back at Harvester, shaking her head. "What is it?" she whispers.
"Being eaten never stopped anyone from getting up again. I've seen more than one meal come up once mo..." Sen-Jyu stops at Harvester's hiss, falling silent and alert.
Harvester moves nearer to his companions. "I heard my name," speaks the cleric, softly. "And then I thought I heard Waterman saying I was 'strange'... his voice trailed away..."
"Visions... er, listens, from your god?" asks Sen-Jyu gently.
Harvester looks slowly about, attempting to divine where the voices came from - or if they were only imagined.
Ahoke blinks, and whispers, "Do you think that Waterman is down here?"
Harvester shakes his head slowly. "I do not know... I don't think it was from my Lord, though.... let's look about. Maybe Waterman's near and neck deep in the sh-t." He glances back. "If he is, I intend to see he drowns."
There are two "exits" from the room besides the one you came in through: a well along the southern wall, and a tiny vertical crevice on the east - too narrow for even a thanork to fit down. Taking a closer look, it seems as if the rock directly above the crevice has been carved into a crude seat, making for a stone garderobe.
Ahoke smirks at the garderobe. "Do you want to see if he's neck deep in sh-t?"
Aside from that, the only feature of note are the piles of flesh and the carving on the back wall.
Sen-Jyu begins to move toward the carving on the back wall, though he doesn't go out of the range of the light. "Come with me, please?" he asks of the Harvester, gesturing to the carving.
Harvester snorts at Ahoke, then moves to inspect the carving briefly. "Doubt he is, but I'll look in a sec." He turns, to Sen-Jyu and grins, having had the same thought. He continues to speak softly, to Ahoke, "Can you see where that goes?" He gestures south.
Ahoke looks at Harvester as if he's crazy. "It's a well... it goes down."
The carving is a triptych: three panels on the wall. From left to right, it portrays: a graceful dragon gazing beneficiently over dozens of man working happily in the mine; men working in a forge, smelting ore and forming goods from the copper - including bells; and last, the men presenting these offerings to the dragon by placing them in an enormous fiery bowl, while the creature looks on in pleasure.
Ahoke walks over to the well, looking it over carefully, to make sure that there aren't any undead thanork crawling out of it.
Harvester murmurs to Sen-Jyu, grinning as Ahoke checks the well, "See anything here, Sen?"
Ahoke adds, "Yeah, it's a well. There's rushing water underneath it." She moves away, walking back to the center of the room. "You know, it smells bad in here. Let's get out."
Sen-Jyu runs his fingers over the carving's topology, caressing its curves adoringly. "This means something..." he whispers to himself, then looks back at the Harvester. "No."
Ahoke frowns. "I've killed these creatures before. Every one that I've ever encountered has had bones." She gestures at her bone armor. Some of this is crafted from such a creature.."
Harvester whispers softly, "Skeletons... animated?" He glances at Ahoke and begins to move towards the rotting flesh, then pauses. "Finished, Sen? or shall I wait?"
Looking a bit glassy-eyed, Sen-Jyu says, "I'm... finished, thank you." He turns to smile at his two companions, then looks quizzical at their frowning faces. "Something wrong?"
Ahoke gestures at the pile of flesh. "Yes. These things generally have bones."
"... and they don't?" comes Sen-Jyu's next question.
Harvester nods once, then moves to the rotten meat, and pokes with the haft of his scythe. "These all lizard and thanork, or...."
Ahoke shrugs. "Let's go see if there's anything elsewhere. And no, these don't."
Harvester nods in agreement with Ahoke, "Yeah, they do. I wonder if they've been made walking skeletons..." He moves to the garderobe, briefly, and shines his torch in.
"Hmm. Sounds like something is bone-collecting and these are the discarded piles. Either that, or the beetles are able to chew through bone." Sen-Jyu shrugs, oddly calm to the revelation.
Harvester shrugs, and turns to walk out with the dwarf. "He ain't there," he remarks softly. He pauses to look back in.
Ahoke nods, leaving the way that she came.
Sen-Jyu follows behind the other two, gazing one more time at the triptych.
drnuncheon
Explorer
Caliber said:
I think I used either spot or a Wis check, I can't recall which. No scent, although it would certainly seem to be appropriate for her...
J
drnuncheon
Explorer
Returning to the intersection...to the left, the cavern and exit. Ahead, the shaft opens to another cavern at the edge of Harvester's light...to the right, it disappears into blackness.
"The other cavern," suggests Sen-Jyu from the back, his voice distant and faded.
Ahoke shrugs, moving towards the right hand cavern. "Alright," she says, "Let's go see what wonders there are to be seen." She moves in whichever direction that Sen-Jyu seemed to be talking about.
The cave here must have been a copper mine - the wide open expanse of rough-hewn walls is testament to that. Rotted wooden pillars hold the roof up - at least, in some places. In others, the ceiling has partially collapsed, leaving piles of rubble on the floor. Patches of slime glisten on the ground, and a pool of an unnaturally bright azure hue glimmers at the edge of the light.
The cavern is large enough that the light does not illuminate it all. You cannot see the far wall, nor the left.
Harvester murmurs softly, "I do not care for cavernous pools..." He approaches slowly, cautiously.
"... of an unnaturally bright azure hue," adds Sen-Jyu warily.
Ahoke pauses, looking at the blue glimmering. "What...?" She pauses, looking around and getting her bearings. "Slime never means anything good," she states authoritatively.
The pool is large - thirty feet wide at least at the end that the light illuminates.
Ahoke picks up a piece of rock. "Step back." She then tosses the rock and tosses it underhand to the center of the pool. "Let's see what happens."
*plorp* - the rock vanishes into the depths.
Ahoke hmms. "Well, that was disappointing. Harv, you should go up and dip your toe in, see what happens."
Sen-Jyu grins. "I agree. It will probably find you the most delectable of the three of us."
Ahoke scowls over at the bright blue thing. "Is that what the brain shards were made out of? And if so... what do we do about it?"
Harvester grunts at Ahoke. "No thanks... I _like_ having ten toes..." Instead he looks around for a suitable piece of wood to poke the pool with. A moment's seach turns up a piece of wood - rather rotted and slightly slimy - from one of the collapsed pillars.
"At the moment? Nothing." Sen-Jyu says decidedly. "I wouldn't even begin to know what to do with it if it -were- some sort of oni-spawning liquid. I think the safest course of action is still to find who's behind the brain-slivers and bring justice to them."
Harvester hefts the length of wood after stowing the torch in his belt once more, and pokes the end of it into the edge of the pool, then begins to reach further outward with it.
It gets wet.
Ahoke nods. "Or kill them," she says agreeably. She falls silent, watching Harvester.
The cleric's body blocks the divine glow emanating from the torch, casting weird shadows over the room - shadows that bother Ahoke's vision not at all, but Sen-Jyu's slightly more.
"I think it's just filled with some sort of underground algae," offers Sen-Jyu thoughtfully. "Very pretty, don't you think?"
Harvester drops the piece of wood with a shrug. "Okay. it appears to just be your everyday, normal, bright blue pool of water..." He turns away to look about the rest of the cavern, torch once more in hand.
Ahoke hrrms, looking dubiously at the bright blue crap. "Alright. Let's go back into the darkness, and see what's waiting to eat us there."
Harvester nods to himself and approaches the nearest wall, and begins to traverse the perimeter of the cavern.
"Maybe we should finish looking through this room? Or have you already seen everything in it?" Sen-Jyu cocks his head to one side as he looks at Ahoke.
Ahoke gestures off into the darkness. "there's another door over there anyway. I'm sure that we'll want to look into it."
Harvester ears Ahoke's statement and turns. "Oh? Is that all? Well then, let's check it out..."
Ahoke nods, and starts moving in that direction. "Yeah. I just noticed it," she admits. "But it bears looking at."
Sen-Jyu falls to the rear again, keeping an eye out as the three approach the door.
The doorway leads down a short corridor to another room - one that seems to have been an office, or a prison, or both: a rotted desk lies up against the back wall, while copper chains and manacles dangle from the right. In the center of the room, on the floor, lies a copper statue of a man with a dragon's head, covered in verdigris and limestone that has apparently dripped from the ceiling overhead, making tiny stalagmites on the statue's surface.
Ahoke frowns as they move into the room. "It doesn't appear to have been disturbed for a long time," she says, "But this seems to be a bit strange of a place to have furniture... should we try to open some of the drawers?"
Sen-Jyu moves to take place close to the statue, preparing to examine it more closely.
Harvester nods to Ahoke. "Sure. Go for it." He moves to help at the desk, pausisng to look over the chains and manacle first.
Ahoke walks over to the desk, peering at it. She then reaches down to try to remove one of the drawers. "It's locked," she grunts. "The wood is rotted.. maybe I should just smash it open with my club."
Harvester looks over after a moment and muses, "Wonder why they had a 'prison' down here... unless it was one of Copperdeath's doings for those he couldn't control..." He nods to Ahoke, "Or just rip it open." He steps back.
The wood of the desk crumbles away in front of Ahoke's club, spilling the contents out onto the floor: the rotted remnants of papers, blurred and illegible; a small jar; a wooden box; and a tiny copper figure of a soldier.
Ahoke grunts triumphantly, and kneels to look at the jar, the box, and the soldier.
Harvester stops the items from bouncing too far, with his foot. He, too, examines them, looking at the box first.
Ahoke opens the jar, cautiously sniffing it. "Well, it used to be a liquid, or paste," she said. "But I don't know what it is now. I think it's pretty useless." She glances over to Harvester. "What's the box?"
Sen-Jyu looks over the fallen statue, using what light he can to seek out details on it.
Harvester murmurs to Ahoke, eyes twinkling as he looks in the box, "A box is normally a container that holds things, with six sides..." His mirth turns to surprise as it is opened, however. "Oh, my... I wonder what these might be... Five crystalline shards, though they differ from the pair we've already found. Larger, duller, and clear..." He reaches in a gloved hand to extract one.
Frowning in concentration, Sen-Jyu sheathes Ichido-sama, placing both hands firmly on the statue's forearm. He then attempts to shift it in some manner, as if bending the arm at its elbow. The arm moves with a squeal of protest, leaving a streak of bright copper where the corrosion has been rubbed away by the motion.
Ahoke scowls at the shards. "Oh... so what did they do? Shove them into the brains of prisoners?" She looks over at Sen-Jyu then, when he starts making noise.
Harvester shrugs at Ahoke while he nearly drops the crystal as Sen-Jyu's new friend shrieks. He looks over and replaces the shard in the box before stowing it, and reaches out to pick up the toy soldier. "Whatcha got there, Sen?"
"I'm not sure, but this statue may have once been... articulate. And is still, possibly, hollow." Sen-Jyu seeks further, searching as much with his hands as with his eyes.
Harvester looks at Ahoke and clarifies, "Your guess is good as mine... That's my thinking, though." he agrees.
Ahoke blinks. "An articulate statue? That's bizarre...." She looks back to Harvester. "Either that or the person that sat at this desk used them on himself. Or herself."
Harvester shudders at the thought and raises the soldier to study it. "That'd be... ow. That'd definitely be 'ow'."
Harvester whistles softly, then rises to face Sen-Jyu and the statue. "Uh... Sen? Can you step back a sec? Want to try something..."
Sen-Jyu rises, stepping one pace back from the statue while he waits for what the Harvester intends to do.
Ahoke takes a step back as well, as if expecting exposive action, for some reason. Maybe she knows Harvester too well. Maybe she's paranoid.
Harvester holds up the toy soldier, "Completely untarnished... and complete with tiny joints... Maybe..." He slowly raises the right arm of the toy.
Harvester grunts as he meets resistance. "I don't want to force it... maybe the statue's too corroded? He looks over the statue's current positioning and compares it to the toy. "I'm thinking this," he raises the figure, "controls that." He pushes the arm a bit harder.
Eyeing the Harvester, Sen-Jyu says, "I think, if you're assuming that that is some sort of puppet to manipulate the statue, that the eyes -- or whatever -- of the statue need to be returned to it. Right now, its eyesockets are hollow." Shrugging, he adds, "That is, if I knew anything about magic."
There is a bit more resistance, and then something inside the figurine gives way, and the arm flops freely. The larger statue does not move.
Harvester says, "Oh, *&%#. That was so wrong..."
Ahoke frowns, and starts looking around the room for statue eyes. "I don't /see/ any eyes. Maybe the crystal shards would make it work?"
Sen-Jyu grins. "As I said, if I knew anything about magic... perhaps the Harvester can see whether or not either toy or statue are magical."
Harvester sighs and nods at Sen-Jyu. "Should've tried that first." He sets the figure down and begins to cast.
As Harvester sets the figure down, it stirs, and begins to march back and forth, the broken arm hanging sadly at its side as the other swings back and forth. Occasionally the right arm twitches a bit, but that is all.
Ahoke blinks as the soldier starts marching around. "Umm... that isn't normal. Is it?" She looks up at the other two, truly bewildered. "My tribe /never/ had anything like this."
Sen-Jyu clears his throat, then nods knowingly to Ahoke's question. "Magic," he states.
Harvester blinks and looks at the marching figure. "Wha...." He grunts in displeasure at his barbaric heavy-handedness, then reaches up to his ear and removes something. He holds a little 'hearing trumpet' in his hand. A nod, the it is replaced. He reaches down to pick up the figure again for closer study. "This is magical, yes. As is the earring taken from the elven woman's ear." As he picks up the figurine, it stops moving.
Sen-Jyu kneels by the statue again, 'massaging' the joints to limberness as he did with the first. The echoes of squalling metal bounce off of the walls.
Harvester sighs and gently rotates the loose arm, hoping that something inside catches it back into place. The arm swings merrily 'round and 'round.
Ahoke scowls at the Harvester. "You were planning on revealing this earring to the rest of us at some point?"
Harvester shakes his head to himself, then blinks at Ahoke. "Eh? Uh.... sorry. I found an earring, guys?"
Sen-Jyu grins at Ahoke. "We all keep secrets. He just reveals his in time."
Ahoke glares at Sen-Jyu, but keeps her own counsel. She turns her gaze back to Harvester, and waits.
Sen-Jyu returns merrily to the statue and his cacophonic metal-on-metal screeching.
Harvester shrugs a shoulder. "It just appeared to be an interesting earring. And I _did_ tell you the moment I learned its value, didn't I? So chill..." He carries his torch towards Sen-Jyu and the statue to look more closely.
Sen-Jyu asks, "Do we have something that we'd care to place in this statue's eyesockets? Anything? If either one of you found some eyes that might fit this, you should speak up now."
The magical glow from the torch appears to be dimming as the spell approaches its end.
Ahoke continues scowling, and then turns to walk to the doorway leading outward. "No, I have found no eyes," she says stiffly.
Harvester examines the eyesockets, then frowns at his light. He sets the torch down and quickly extracts flint and steel, attempting to set the torch alight with proper fire.
No more storing it in his belt...the pitchy head of the torch catches a pair of sparks that the cleric is able to blow into actual flames.
"Hmmm," Sen-Jyu says, standing and prodding the statue with his foot. "No eyes for you. Sorry, friend." He looks about the rest of the room for possible niches for eyes.
"Maybe you're supposed to use your own eyes," muses Ahoke, looking around.
Harvester glances towards Ahoke as she leaves, then searches.
Ahoke does not, in fact, leave, but stands in the doorway.
Ahoke sighs, looking over at the desk for a moment, and then clumps into the room. "There's something shiny, anyway," she says, approaching the desk. She reaches behind it, feeling around.
Harvester turns to watch Ahoke, "Yeah?"
Ahoke scowls, looking at the item. "It's not eyes, though." She holds up a beautifully made mirror - copper of course, covered with corrosion. She peers into the surface, trying to get a view of herself through said corrosion.
Ahoke hmmphs. "Must've been an elf or something staying here." She brushes some of the crud off of the mirror. "It's going to have to be polished to be used properly.
Harvester's head tilts as he regards the mirror. "Heh. Should be worth something, though..." He holds out the oty soldier. "You want to hang onto this, or shall I?"
Ahoke glances from the mirror to the soldier. "You can, I don't want it crawling around inside my clothes." She looks down at the mirror, and then pockets it. "Hopefully this isn't an /evil/ mirror," she says, as if every other mirror she's run into has been.
Sen-Jyu thinks about Ahoke's comment seriously for a moment. "I'm not sure that it would matter -- mirrors are notoriously inanimate."
Harvester places the soldier into a pouch with a laugh. "I don't know about evil, but can say it ain't magic..." He looks at the empty eyesockets again. "Y'all wanted to put the crystals in this thing?"
Ahoke looks over at the bigger statue. "It can't hurt to try, I guess? At the worst, we'll feel really silly. Or it will become animate, and kill us all."
Harvester shakes his head. "Won't work. Maybe we'll find something somewhere else, that'll fit." He jerks a thumb outwards. "Want to push on?"
Sen-Jyu smirks faintly. "Which would be much more interesting than it's been already."
Ahoke mmms, and nods, moving to the door. "Onward. I guess we should explore the rest of the cavern, and then go on out to that shaft that we haven't looked at yet."
Harvester follows the dwarf, once more.
Ahoke moves back out into the cavern, and starts prowling around the outer perimeter.
Harvester skirts around the edge of the large cavern as they pass through, his eyes picking fruitlessly through the flickering gloom.
Ahoke ummms. "Guys? Stay away from the slime..."
Harvester's foot was about to step in a patch, and he pauses, leg poised in midair. He steps back. "Why?" He moves further still. "What's with the slime?"
Ahoke umms again. "I just kicked some wood into it... and the slime dissolved the wood. Really fast."
Harvester blinks and regards the slime curiously now. "Really? How very interesting..." He takes a piece of wood and tosses it into a patch.
The other patch - a bluish-green color - merely splatters a bit, leaving the wood unharmed.
Ahoke scowls. "It did! I swear." She tosses a piece of wood into "her" patch to prove it.
Harvester frowns, then picks up another piece of wood and moves - carefully - to Ahoke. "Which patch did it?
Ahoke points at the offending algae patch. "that one," she said accusingly, as if it had just dissolved her foot." "Ahoke's" patch does indeed melt the wood, the slime growing as the wood is transformed.
Ahoke hmms. "Good thing I didn't decide to take a swim, get cleaned up. I was considering it, since one doesn't ever want to go into battle already dirty."
Harvester peers at the patch thoughtfully, and murmurs, "What distinguishes this patch, from that, aside from its disolving ability..."
"Well. Wood-dissolving slime. I wonder what other purposes that could solve?" Sen-Jyu grins at the other two as he observes their scientific experiments.
Harvester hmms to himself, then pulls out his pack. A bolt is extracted and the metal head is touched to the patch of algae.
Harvester glances to Sen-Jyu, "Well, if it doesn't dissolve metal or glass, I intent to take some... I'm betting it'll hurt flesh..."
Ahoke hmms. "Maybe that's what was in the jar, back in the other room."
Harvester glances to Ahoke, "How's that?"
The metal, too, slumps away as the slime begins to dissolve the bolt, working its way up towards Harvester's fingers.
Harvester releases the bolt after trying to gauge the swiftness of the action.
Ahoke shakes her head. "No, the stuff in the jar wasn't green. It was probably some kind of salve or something. I left it behind. But..." she says, "I guess that means that we won't be taking the slime with us?"
Harvester remains thoughtful, then extracts and empty glass flask. He lowers it carefully, so that the edge of its lip touches the 'slime'. The glass seems to be unharmed by the stuff. He ponders aloud. "The trick will be to get this into the flask... Any thoughts? He examines his belongings.
"And... why are we getting this into the flask? Am I missing something?" The spirit blood pipes up with this rather innocent question.
Ahoke shakes her head, not appearing to want to get near it. She looks over at Sen-Jyu, nodding her agreement. "I can see where it would be good to melt your enemies, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk of a leak."
Harvester laughs softly in response to Sen-Jyu's query. "Imagine the efficacy of this stuff on flesh..." He nods to Ahoke, "I intend to be very, very careful..."
Sen-Jyu flicks one hand in indication of Ichido-sama. "I think I can imagine the efficacy of many things on flesh. Thing is, one can be trained to use a sword. A little harder not to cut yourself with a glob of slime."
Ahoke waits for Harvester to do his collecting, and starts prowling around again, looking at the cavern in all of its dank glory.
Harvester sets the flask on dry ground, and finds some wood. He attempts to scoop and drip some slime into the flask, throwing the wood back into the patch - carefully - if it makes it way towards his fingers too swiftly. A dollop of the slime is shoved inside the flask, along with the piece of wood, which melts happily into greenish sludge.
Harvester sighs, in satisfaction, an exhalation of breath a sign of his relaxation through the process. He stoppers the flask carefully, then pulls out a ball of sealing wax to close the flask up tightly. He studies the container carefully, for signs of decay, then decides to coat the entirety with rapidly cooling wax.
Harvester says, "I think I'll only do the one..." says the priest, as he opens an empty pouch and wraps the flask in cloth to place it inside.
Sen-Jyu shakes his head a little. "Why you're even doing the one is beyond me. You mentioned something earlier about 'borrowing trouble', and now seem to be quite cheerfully ignoring those very words. Far be it for me to point these things out, however." Grinning, he looks at Ahoke. "So, fearless leader, back to the shaft?"
Harvester laughs softly as he gently pats the pouch and follows, "It may cause trouble, yes, or it may avert some..."
Ahoke nods. "Yeah," she says. "I haven't been able to find anything else." She does take the long way around the cavern though, giving everything a once-over.
"Hold," Sen-Jyu says suddenly, pausing by one of the other pools of slime.
Harvester stops, and looks at Sen-Jyu. "What is it, Sen?"
Sen-Jyu points to a flat rock next to the pool. Upon observation, some lettering is written there.
Ahoke mmms. "What's it say?"
Harvester shakes his head and reads it aloud, to Ahoke:
Here lies Corum Mosstoes, dissolved before we could save
him. He was a friend and a hero. We know the child was
taken to the tunnels above us; we continue on as
Corum would have wanted.
Deke Forgeman
Caliandra Stormhold
Petros Bellson
Sen-Jyu sighs a little. "The halfling woman is going to be very unhappy."
Harvester nods in agreement. "At least we're on the right track, though..."
Ahoke nods, sighing. "Yeah. Maybe the heroes will continue to leave us clues, assuming that the rest of them don't fall into algae pits..." She looks at the marker with something akin to pity, and then turns. "To the shaft?"
Sen-Jyu ponders, "Child? Not children? Which child could they mean?"
Ahoke shrugs. "I guess there's only one way to find out," she says, moving towards the way back to the juncture.
Harvester glances over. "Which was the last child taken?"
Harvester nods as Ahoke moves off. "Right. Let's go and ask."
Sen-Jyu ponders this. "Not sure. It probably was the first child taken -- assuming they mounted their expedition immediately after."
Sen-Jyu follows Ahoke, too.
Harvester pauses before moving away from the marker, "Hey, Corum... Say hello to the Lord for me..."
"The other cavern," suggests Sen-Jyu from the back, his voice distant and faded.
Ahoke shrugs, moving towards the right hand cavern. "Alright," she says, "Let's go see what wonders there are to be seen." She moves in whichever direction that Sen-Jyu seemed to be talking about.
The cave here must have been a copper mine - the wide open expanse of rough-hewn walls is testament to that. Rotted wooden pillars hold the roof up - at least, in some places. In others, the ceiling has partially collapsed, leaving piles of rubble on the floor. Patches of slime glisten on the ground, and a pool of an unnaturally bright azure hue glimmers at the edge of the light.
The cavern is large enough that the light does not illuminate it all. You cannot see the far wall, nor the left.
Harvester murmurs softly, "I do not care for cavernous pools..." He approaches slowly, cautiously.
"... of an unnaturally bright azure hue," adds Sen-Jyu warily.
Ahoke pauses, looking at the blue glimmering. "What...?" She pauses, looking around and getting her bearings. "Slime never means anything good," she states authoritatively.
The pool is large - thirty feet wide at least at the end that the light illuminates.
Ahoke picks up a piece of rock. "Step back." She then tosses the rock and tosses it underhand to the center of the pool. "Let's see what happens."
*plorp* - the rock vanishes into the depths.
Ahoke hmms. "Well, that was disappointing. Harv, you should go up and dip your toe in, see what happens."
Sen-Jyu grins. "I agree. It will probably find you the most delectable of the three of us."
Ahoke scowls over at the bright blue thing. "Is that what the brain shards were made out of? And if so... what do we do about it?"
Harvester grunts at Ahoke. "No thanks... I _like_ having ten toes..." Instead he looks around for a suitable piece of wood to poke the pool with. A moment's seach turns up a piece of wood - rather rotted and slightly slimy - from one of the collapsed pillars.
"At the moment? Nothing." Sen-Jyu says decidedly. "I wouldn't even begin to know what to do with it if it -were- some sort of oni-spawning liquid. I think the safest course of action is still to find who's behind the brain-slivers and bring justice to them."
Harvester hefts the length of wood after stowing the torch in his belt once more, and pokes the end of it into the edge of the pool, then begins to reach further outward with it.
It gets wet.
Ahoke nods. "Or kill them," she says agreeably. She falls silent, watching Harvester.
The cleric's body blocks the divine glow emanating from the torch, casting weird shadows over the room - shadows that bother Ahoke's vision not at all, but Sen-Jyu's slightly more.
"I think it's just filled with some sort of underground algae," offers Sen-Jyu thoughtfully. "Very pretty, don't you think?"
Harvester drops the piece of wood with a shrug. "Okay. it appears to just be your everyday, normal, bright blue pool of water..." He turns away to look about the rest of the cavern, torch once more in hand.
Ahoke hrrms, looking dubiously at the bright blue crap. "Alright. Let's go back into the darkness, and see what's waiting to eat us there."
Harvester nods to himself and approaches the nearest wall, and begins to traverse the perimeter of the cavern.
"Maybe we should finish looking through this room? Or have you already seen everything in it?" Sen-Jyu cocks his head to one side as he looks at Ahoke.
Ahoke gestures off into the darkness. "there's another door over there anyway. I'm sure that we'll want to look into it."
Harvester ears Ahoke's statement and turns. "Oh? Is that all? Well then, let's check it out..."
Ahoke nods, and starts moving in that direction. "Yeah. I just noticed it," she admits. "But it bears looking at."
Sen-Jyu falls to the rear again, keeping an eye out as the three approach the door.
The doorway leads down a short corridor to another room - one that seems to have been an office, or a prison, or both: a rotted desk lies up against the back wall, while copper chains and manacles dangle from the right. In the center of the room, on the floor, lies a copper statue of a man with a dragon's head, covered in verdigris and limestone that has apparently dripped from the ceiling overhead, making tiny stalagmites on the statue's surface.
Ahoke frowns as they move into the room. "It doesn't appear to have been disturbed for a long time," she says, "But this seems to be a bit strange of a place to have furniture... should we try to open some of the drawers?"
Sen-Jyu moves to take place close to the statue, preparing to examine it more closely.
Harvester nods to Ahoke. "Sure. Go for it." He moves to help at the desk, pausisng to look over the chains and manacle first.
Ahoke walks over to the desk, peering at it. She then reaches down to try to remove one of the drawers. "It's locked," she grunts. "The wood is rotted.. maybe I should just smash it open with my club."
Harvester looks over after a moment and muses, "Wonder why they had a 'prison' down here... unless it was one of Copperdeath's doings for those he couldn't control..." He nods to Ahoke, "Or just rip it open." He steps back.
The wood of the desk crumbles away in front of Ahoke's club, spilling the contents out onto the floor: the rotted remnants of papers, blurred and illegible; a small jar; a wooden box; and a tiny copper figure of a soldier.
Ahoke grunts triumphantly, and kneels to look at the jar, the box, and the soldier.
Harvester stops the items from bouncing too far, with his foot. He, too, examines them, looking at the box first.
Ahoke opens the jar, cautiously sniffing it. "Well, it used to be a liquid, or paste," she said. "But I don't know what it is now. I think it's pretty useless." She glances over to Harvester. "What's the box?"
Sen-Jyu looks over the fallen statue, using what light he can to seek out details on it.
Harvester murmurs to Ahoke, eyes twinkling as he looks in the box, "A box is normally a container that holds things, with six sides..." His mirth turns to surprise as it is opened, however. "Oh, my... I wonder what these might be... Five crystalline shards, though they differ from the pair we've already found. Larger, duller, and clear..." He reaches in a gloved hand to extract one.
Frowning in concentration, Sen-Jyu sheathes Ichido-sama, placing both hands firmly on the statue's forearm. He then attempts to shift it in some manner, as if bending the arm at its elbow. The arm moves with a squeal of protest, leaving a streak of bright copper where the corrosion has been rubbed away by the motion.
Ahoke scowls at the shards. "Oh... so what did they do? Shove them into the brains of prisoners?" She looks over at Sen-Jyu then, when he starts making noise.
Harvester shrugs at Ahoke while he nearly drops the crystal as Sen-Jyu's new friend shrieks. He looks over and replaces the shard in the box before stowing it, and reaches out to pick up the toy soldier. "Whatcha got there, Sen?"
"I'm not sure, but this statue may have once been... articulate. And is still, possibly, hollow." Sen-Jyu seeks further, searching as much with his hands as with his eyes.
Harvester looks at Ahoke and clarifies, "Your guess is good as mine... That's my thinking, though." he agrees.
Ahoke blinks. "An articulate statue? That's bizarre...." She looks back to Harvester. "Either that or the person that sat at this desk used them on himself. Or herself."
Harvester shudders at the thought and raises the soldier to study it. "That'd be... ow. That'd definitely be 'ow'."
Harvester whistles softly, then rises to face Sen-Jyu and the statue. "Uh... Sen? Can you step back a sec? Want to try something..."
Sen-Jyu rises, stepping one pace back from the statue while he waits for what the Harvester intends to do.
Ahoke takes a step back as well, as if expecting exposive action, for some reason. Maybe she knows Harvester too well. Maybe she's paranoid.
Harvester holds up the toy soldier, "Completely untarnished... and complete with tiny joints... Maybe..." He slowly raises the right arm of the toy.
Harvester grunts as he meets resistance. "I don't want to force it... maybe the statue's too corroded? He looks over the statue's current positioning and compares it to the toy. "I'm thinking this," he raises the figure, "controls that." He pushes the arm a bit harder.
Eyeing the Harvester, Sen-Jyu says, "I think, if you're assuming that that is some sort of puppet to manipulate the statue, that the eyes -- or whatever -- of the statue need to be returned to it. Right now, its eyesockets are hollow." Shrugging, he adds, "That is, if I knew anything about magic."
There is a bit more resistance, and then something inside the figurine gives way, and the arm flops freely. The larger statue does not move.
Harvester says, "Oh, *&%#. That was so wrong..."
Ahoke frowns, and starts looking around the room for statue eyes. "I don't /see/ any eyes. Maybe the crystal shards would make it work?"
Sen-Jyu grins. "As I said, if I knew anything about magic... perhaps the Harvester can see whether or not either toy or statue are magical."
Harvester sighs and nods at Sen-Jyu. "Should've tried that first." He sets the figure down and begins to cast.
As Harvester sets the figure down, it stirs, and begins to march back and forth, the broken arm hanging sadly at its side as the other swings back and forth. Occasionally the right arm twitches a bit, but that is all.
Ahoke blinks as the soldier starts marching around. "Umm... that isn't normal. Is it?" She looks up at the other two, truly bewildered. "My tribe /never/ had anything like this."
Sen-Jyu clears his throat, then nods knowingly to Ahoke's question. "Magic," he states.
Harvester blinks and looks at the marching figure. "Wha...." He grunts in displeasure at his barbaric heavy-handedness, then reaches up to his ear and removes something. He holds a little 'hearing trumpet' in his hand. A nod, the it is replaced. He reaches down to pick up the figure again for closer study. "This is magical, yes. As is the earring taken from the elven woman's ear." As he picks up the figurine, it stops moving.
Sen-Jyu kneels by the statue again, 'massaging' the joints to limberness as he did with the first. The echoes of squalling metal bounce off of the walls.
Harvester sighs and gently rotates the loose arm, hoping that something inside catches it back into place. The arm swings merrily 'round and 'round.
Ahoke scowls at the Harvester. "You were planning on revealing this earring to the rest of us at some point?"
Harvester shakes his head to himself, then blinks at Ahoke. "Eh? Uh.... sorry. I found an earring, guys?"
Sen-Jyu grins at Ahoke. "We all keep secrets. He just reveals his in time."
Ahoke glares at Sen-Jyu, but keeps her own counsel. She turns her gaze back to Harvester, and waits.
Sen-Jyu returns merrily to the statue and his cacophonic metal-on-metal screeching.
Harvester shrugs a shoulder. "It just appeared to be an interesting earring. And I _did_ tell you the moment I learned its value, didn't I? So chill..." He carries his torch towards Sen-Jyu and the statue to look more closely.
Sen-Jyu asks, "Do we have something that we'd care to place in this statue's eyesockets? Anything? If either one of you found some eyes that might fit this, you should speak up now."
The magical glow from the torch appears to be dimming as the spell approaches its end.
Ahoke continues scowling, and then turns to walk to the doorway leading outward. "No, I have found no eyes," she says stiffly.
Harvester examines the eyesockets, then frowns at his light. He sets the torch down and quickly extracts flint and steel, attempting to set the torch alight with proper fire.
No more storing it in his belt...the pitchy head of the torch catches a pair of sparks that the cleric is able to blow into actual flames.
"Hmmm," Sen-Jyu says, standing and prodding the statue with his foot. "No eyes for you. Sorry, friend." He looks about the rest of the room for possible niches for eyes.
"Maybe you're supposed to use your own eyes," muses Ahoke, looking around.
Harvester glances towards Ahoke as she leaves, then searches.
Ahoke does not, in fact, leave, but stands in the doorway.
Ahoke sighs, looking over at the desk for a moment, and then clumps into the room. "There's something shiny, anyway," she says, approaching the desk. She reaches behind it, feeling around.
Harvester turns to watch Ahoke, "Yeah?"
Ahoke scowls, looking at the item. "It's not eyes, though." She holds up a beautifully made mirror - copper of course, covered with corrosion. She peers into the surface, trying to get a view of herself through said corrosion.
Ahoke hmmphs. "Must've been an elf or something staying here." She brushes some of the crud off of the mirror. "It's going to have to be polished to be used properly.
Harvester's head tilts as he regards the mirror. "Heh. Should be worth something, though..." He holds out the oty soldier. "You want to hang onto this, or shall I?"
Ahoke glances from the mirror to the soldier. "You can, I don't want it crawling around inside my clothes." She looks down at the mirror, and then pockets it. "Hopefully this isn't an /evil/ mirror," she says, as if every other mirror she's run into has been.
Sen-Jyu thinks about Ahoke's comment seriously for a moment. "I'm not sure that it would matter -- mirrors are notoriously inanimate."
Harvester places the soldier into a pouch with a laugh. "I don't know about evil, but can say it ain't magic..." He looks at the empty eyesockets again. "Y'all wanted to put the crystals in this thing?"
Ahoke looks over at the bigger statue. "It can't hurt to try, I guess? At the worst, we'll feel really silly. Or it will become animate, and kill us all."
Harvester shakes his head. "Won't work. Maybe we'll find something somewhere else, that'll fit." He jerks a thumb outwards. "Want to push on?"
Sen-Jyu smirks faintly. "Which would be much more interesting than it's been already."
Ahoke mmms, and nods, moving to the door. "Onward. I guess we should explore the rest of the cavern, and then go on out to that shaft that we haven't looked at yet."
Harvester follows the dwarf, once more.
Ahoke moves back out into the cavern, and starts prowling around the outer perimeter.
Harvester skirts around the edge of the large cavern as they pass through, his eyes picking fruitlessly through the flickering gloom.
Ahoke ummms. "Guys? Stay away from the slime..."
Harvester's foot was about to step in a patch, and he pauses, leg poised in midair. He steps back. "Why?" He moves further still. "What's with the slime?"
Ahoke umms again. "I just kicked some wood into it... and the slime dissolved the wood. Really fast."
Harvester blinks and regards the slime curiously now. "Really? How very interesting..." He takes a piece of wood and tosses it into a patch.
The other patch - a bluish-green color - merely splatters a bit, leaving the wood unharmed.
Ahoke scowls. "It did! I swear." She tosses a piece of wood into "her" patch to prove it.
Harvester frowns, then picks up another piece of wood and moves - carefully - to Ahoke. "Which patch did it?
Ahoke points at the offending algae patch. "that one," she said accusingly, as if it had just dissolved her foot." "Ahoke's" patch does indeed melt the wood, the slime growing as the wood is transformed.
Ahoke hmms. "Good thing I didn't decide to take a swim, get cleaned up. I was considering it, since one doesn't ever want to go into battle already dirty."
Harvester peers at the patch thoughtfully, and murmurs, "What distinguishes this patch, from that, aside from its disolving ability..."
"Well. Wood-dissolving slime. I wonder what other purposes that could solve?" Sen-Jyu grins at the other two as he observes their scientific experiments.
Harvester hmms to himself, then pulls out his pack. A bolt is extracted and the metal head is touched to the patch of algae.
Harvester glances to Sen-Jyu, "Well, if it doesn't dissolve metal or glass, I intent to take some... I'm betting it'll hurt flesh..."
Ahoke hmms. "Maybe that's what was in the jar, back in the other room."
Harvester glances to Ahoke, "How's that?"
The metal, too, slumps away as the slime begins to dissolve the bolt, working its way up towards Harvester's fingers.
Harvester releases the bolt after trying to gauge the swiftness of the action.
Ahoke shakes her head. "No, the stuff in the jar wasn't green. It was probably some kind of salve or something. I left it behind. But..." she says, "I guess that means that we won't be taking the slime with us?"
Harvester remains thoughtful, then extracts and empty glass flask. He lowers it carefully, so that the edge of its lip touches the 'slime'. The glass seems to be unharmed by the stuff. He ponders aloud. "The trick will be to get this into the flask... Any thoughts? He examines his belongings.
"And... why are we getting this into the flask? Am I missing something?" The spirit blood pipes up with this rather innocent question.
Ahoke shakes her head, not appearing to want to get near it. She looks over at Sen-Jyu, nodding her agreement. "I can see where it would be good to melt your enemies, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk of a leak."
Harvester laughs softly in response to Sen-Jyu's query. "Imagine the efficacy of this stuff on flesh..." He nods to Ahoke, "I intend to be very, very careful..."
Sen-Jyu flicks one hand in indication of Ichido-sama. "I think I can imagine the efficacy of many things on flesh. Thing is, one can be trained to use a sword. A little harder not to cut yourself with a glob of slime."
Ahoke waits for Harvester to do his collecting, and starts prowling around again, looking at the cavern in all of its dank glory.
Harvester sets the flask on dry ground, and finds some wood. He attempts to scoop and drip some slime into the flask, throwing the wood back into the patch - carefully - if it makes it way towards his fingers too swiftly. A dollop of the slime is shoved inside the flask, along with the piece of wood, which melts happily into greenish sludge.
Harvester sighs, in satisfaction, an exhalation of breath a sign of his relaxation through the process. He stoppers the flask carefully, then pulls out a ball of sealing wax to close the flask up tightly. He studies the container carefully, for signs of decay, then decides to coat the entirety with rapidly cooling wax.
Harvester says, "I think I'll only do the one..." says the priest, as he opens an empty pouch and wraps the flask in cloth to place it inside.
Sen-Jyu shakes his head a little. "Why you're even doing the one is beyond me. You mentioned something earlier about 'borrowing trouble', and now seem to be quite cheerfully ignoring those very words. Far be it for me to point these things out, however." Grinning, he looks at Ahoke. "So, fearless leader, back to the shaft?"
Harvester laughs softly as he gently pats the pouch and follows, "It may cause trouble, yes, or it may avert some..."
Ahoke nods. "Yeah," she says. "I haven't been able to find anything else." She does take the long way around the cavern though, giving everything a once-over.
"Hold," Sen-Jyu says suddenly, pausing by one of the other pools of slime.
Harvester stops, and looks at Sen-Jyu. "What is it, Sen?"
Sen-Jyu points to a flat rock next to the pool. Upon observation, some lettering is written there.
Ahoke mmms. "What's it say?"
Harvester shakes his head and reads it aloud, to Ahoke:
Here lies Corum Mosstoes, dissolved before we could save
him. He was a friend and a hero. We know the child was
taken to the tunnels above us; we continue on as
Corum would have wanted.
Deke Forgeman
Caliandra Stormhold
Petros Bellson
Sen-Jyu sighs a little. "The halfling woman is going to be very unhappy."
Harvester nods in agreement. "At least we're on the right track, though..."
Ahoke nods, sighing. "Yeah. Maybe the heroes will continue to leave us clues, assuming that the rest of them don't fall into algae pits..." She looks at the marker with something akin to pity, and then turns. "To the shaft?"
Sen-Jyu ponders, "Child? Not children? Which child could they mean?"
Ahoke shrugs. "I guess there's only one way to find out," she says, moving towards the way back to the juncture.
Harvester glances over. "Which was the last child taken?"
Harvester nods as Ahoke moves off. "Right. Let's go and ask."
Sen-Jyu ponders this. "Not sure. It probably was the first child taken -- assuming they mounted their expedition immediately after."
Sen-Jyu follows Ahoke, too.
Harvester pauses before moving away from the marker, "Hey, Corum... Say hello to the Lord for me..."
drnuncheon
Explorer
A few paces down the corridor, and you are at the intersection. Caverns ahead, behind and to the right...to the left the dark shaft of the mine continues.
Ahoke looks dourly into the dark mineshaft. "Well, here we are," she says flatly. "As far away from normal blue sky as I've ever been, and going in deeper. I'm ready if you are," she says, moving into the shaft cautiously.
Harvester says, "Down? Thought we wanted 'up'?"
The tunnel stretches on as far as the eye (human or dwarven) can see.
Ahoke pauses. "Well, do you see any stairs?"
Harvester nods, "Sure. Deep into the bowels of the earth..."
Ahoke points down the corridor as she walks. "There's a side passage up ahead. It veer off to the right."
Harvester says, "Let's check the side passage then, I think. Hmm?"
Sen-Jyu grins at Harvester. "Was that a question? I -believe- you think, but there's evidence to the contrary."
As you approach the first side passage, another becomes visible about twenty feet down the corridor - this one to the left.
Ahoke says, "Yeah, I agree. We can always backtrack and take the main corridor again when we explore it all." She stops, looking up ahead. "Well, a few more passages. We could be at this for awhile.""
Harvester laughs softly at Sen-Jyu, but doesn't reply.
Harvester says, "Long as we finish before the week does, Ahoke, that's probably alright..."
"A while it is," says Sen-Jyu. Then, to Harvester, "Please don't dump the slime on me while I'm sleeping."
Ahoke squints down the first side passage. "A dead end," she comments. "Do we want to waste our time with it?"
Sen-Jyu nods. "Just in case. If there's nothing, it won't take much time."
Harvester murmurs to Sen-Jyu, "Hope I'm not too dumb to remember that, sen..."
Harvester nods in agreement and moves into the side passage with the others, and gives it a quick once-over. He's distracted, however, and examines the acidic slime flask.
Harvester gestures back out as he carefully stows the flask, all swaddled in cloth it is. "Well, onward and inward?"
Ahoke hmmphs, and then heads back out to the main shaft again, walking forward until she reaches the next side corridor. Peering down it, she squints. "Let's see.."
Sen-Jyu asks hopefully, "Another dead end?"
Harvester laughs softly.
Ahoke hehs. "Yeah, it's a dead-end. There's a couple of korhorrag, though. They're looking at us." Her tone is casual, but she draws her great club.
"Mmmm," Sen-Jyu says in conversational tone. "How friendly do they look, or is there only green malice in their eyes?"
Ahoke looks dourly into the dark mineshaft. "Well, here we are," she says flatly. "As far away from normal blue sky as I've ever been, and going in deeper. I'm ready if you are," she says, moving into the shaft cautiously.
Harvester says, "Down? Thought we wanted 'up'?"
The tunnel stretches on as far as the eye (human or dwarven) can see.
Ahoke pauses. "Well, do you see any stairs?"
Harvester nods, "Sure. Deep into the bowels of the earth..."
Ahoke points down the corridor as she walks. "There's a side passage up ahead. It veer off to the right."
Harvester says, "Let's check the side passage then, I think. Hmm?"
Sen-Jyu grins at Harvester. "Was that a question? I -believe- you think, but there's evidence to the contrary."
As you approach the first side passage, another becomes visible about twenty feet down the corridor - this one to the left.
Ahoke says, "Yeah, I agree. We can always backtrack and take the main corridor again when we explore it all." She stops, looking up ahead. "Well, a few more passages. We could be at this for awhile.""
Harvester laughs softly at Sen-Jyu, but doesn't reply.
Harvester says, "Long as we finish before the week does, Ahoke, that's probably alright..."
"A while it is," says Sen-Jyu. Then, to Harvester, "Please don't dump the slime on me while I'm sleeping."
Ahoke squints down the first side passage. "A dead end," she comments. "Do we want to waste our time with it?"
Sen-Jyu nods. "Just in case. If there's nothing, it won't take much time."
Harvester murmurs to Sen-Jyu, "Hope I'm not too dumb to remember that, sen..."
Harvester nods in agreement and moves into the side passage with the others, and gives it a quick once-over. He's distracted, however, and examines the acidic slime flask.
Harvester gestures back out as he carefully stows the flask, all swaddled in cloth it is. "Well, onward and inward?"
Ahoke hmmphs, and then heads back out to the main shaft again, walking forward until she reaches the next side corridor. Peering down it, she squints. "Let's see.."
Sen-Jyu asks hopefully, "Another dead end?"
Harvester laughs softly.
Ahoke hehs. "Yeah, it's a dead-end. There's a couple of korhorrag, though. They're looking at us." Her tone is casual, but she draws her great club.
"Mmmm," Sen-Jyu says in conversational tone. "How friendly do they look, or is there only green malice in their eyes?"
drnuncheon
Explorer
More Table Banter & Out-Takes!
As a special Christmas present, I bring you more of the banter, the blather, the OOC goings-on that occured during the last few posted sessions. Less this time, because I accidentally cleaned up a few of the logs without saving the original version...
*
After finishing half of his plate of pancakes, Sen-Jyu tilts his head at the truncheon, hefting it and asking, "Might you have a small sack or something that I could carry this in? For the road."
<OOC> Dungeon Master says, "Trencher - a truncheon is a club."
<OOC> Sen-Jyu says, "'Dur, right."
<OOC> Sen-Jyu eats Ahoke's club.
<OOC> Ahoke says, "Get your mits off!"
<OOC> Sen-Jyu eyes the haft of Harv's scythe.
*
<OOC> Dungeon Master says, "Anyone want to make a Spot check?"
<DIE ROLLER> Harvester rolls 1d20+3 and gets 20.
<DIE ROLLER> Ahoke rolls 1d20 and gets 8.
<DIE ROLLER> Sen-Jyu rolls 1d20+3 and gets 7.
<OOC> Harvester snickers. S'okay. That's my high roll for the evening. Now I'm just a blade magnet.
<OOC> Sen-Jyu's katana is found protruding from Harv's back! "Now, how did -that- get there?"
*
(Ahoke descends into the mineshaft)
Not even a full minute later, she tugs on the rope, signalling that she's reached bottom and that nothing has eaten her.
<OOC> Sen-Jyu bets that's a grue tugging on the rope, asking for more room service.
<OOC> Harvester agrees. Bye, Ke. Nice knowing you...
<OOC> Ahoke nodsnods. "He wants some bamboo shoots with the meat course."
*
Sen-Jyu points to a flat rock next to the pool. Upon observation, some lettering is written there.
<OOC> Harvester says, "Beware acid slime"
<OOC> Sen-Jyu says, "Actually, yes.
"
As a special Christmas present, I bring you more of the banter, the blather, the OOC goings-on that occured during the last few posted sessions. Less this time, because I accidentally cleaned up a few of the logs without saving the original version...
*
After finishing half of his plate of pancakes, Sen-Jyu tilts his head at the truncheon, hefting it and asking, "Might you have a small sack or something that I could carry this in? For the road."
<OOC> Dungeon Master says, "Trencher - a truncheon is a club."
<OOC> Sen-Jyu says, "'Dur, right."
<OOC> Sen-Jyu eats Ahoke's club.
<OOC> Ahoke says, "Get your mits off!"
<OOC> Sen-Jyu eyes the haft of Harv's scythe.
*
<OOC> Dungeon Master says, "Anyone want to make a Spot check?"
<DIE ROLLER> Harvester rolls 1d20+3 and gets 20.
<DIE ROLLER> Ahoke rolls 1d20 and gets 8.
<DIE ROLLER> Sen-Jyu rolls 1d20+3 and gets 7.
<OOC> Harvester snickers. S'okay. That's my high roll for the evening. Now I'm just a blade magnet.
<OOC> Sen-Jyu's katana is found protruding from Harv's back! "Now, how did -that- get there?"
*
(Ahoke descends into the mineshaft)
Not even a full minute later, she tugs on the rope, signalling that she's reached bottom and that nothing has eaten her.
<OOC> Sen-Jyu bets that's a grue tugging on the rope, asking for more room service.
<OOC> Harvester agrees. Bye, Ke. Nice knowing you...
<OOC> Ahoke nodsnods. "He wants some bamboo shoots with the meat course."
*
Sen-Jyu points to a flat rock next to the pool. Upon observation, some lettering is written there.
<OOC> Harvester says, "Beware acid slime"
<OOC> Sen-Jyu says, "Actually, yes.
"
drnuncheon
Explorer
Ahoke growls deep in her throat, sounding more like an animal than a dwarf. Hefting the great club, she gives a loud battle cry, and runs charging down the corridor towards the korhorrag. Drawing back her heavily muscled arms, she brings the club around, connecting solidly with the ribcage of one of the korhorrags, caving it in with a violent splintering.
Harvester raises the symbol of the grinning skull on high, and speaks loudly, "Turn! Begone, foul creatures, return to your graves in the name of He who Is To Come!" The sounds of the enchantment and Ahoke's battlecries have stirred a half century of dust, however, that has risen up about the priest, causing him to cough in the darkness. The kohrkorrag ignore him.
Once Harvester has advanced enough to illuminate the korhorrag, Sen-Jyu cries out a kiai to waken the dead, and hopefully, to put them to rest as well. Ichido-sama raised high, the spirit-blood devours the distance between him and the unliving, the paper-thin edge sliding downward across the shoulder and chest of Sen-Jyu's chosen opponent. The blow is true, cutting deep, yet it reacts with only disdain, the sort that the undead show by simply existing.
The rotting stench of the korhorrag increases as they shift and flail about with their powerful fists - but their reactions are slow, and both dwarf and samurai easily evade their swings.
Ahoke shouts aloud again, jubilation and... something akin to joy in her tone. Her great club is drawn back once again, massive muscles rippling, and then comes down atop the creature's skull, crushing it. With nary a cry, it falls to the ground, and moves no more.
The sword twists in Sen-Jyu's hands as he needles his katana forward, both hands seeking to drive it through the korhorrag. The creature, slow as it is, isn't quite dead, and sidesteps his pathetic swordplay dismissively.
Harvester, seeing that he can advance no farther with his companions blocking the path before him, drops the torch to the ground and yanks out his crossbow. He raises it slowly, and aims as carefully as he might. A SNEEZE! as dust roiled up from the combat fills his nostrils, and the errant bolt whisks past Sen-Jyu's ear and thunks into the ceiling! "Oh dear..."
The korhorrag grunts, as if to mock Sen-Jyu's pathetic attack - but its own clumsy counterattack does no more than ruffle the hair on the spirit-blood's head.
Ahoke whirls around, her eyes agleam with the insane joy that a berserker feels in battle, and targets the second korhorrag. Her great club thuds into the creature's shoulder with a crunch, and its arm falls to the ground.
With savage grunts and growls, two shapes detach themselves from the darkness, lumbering down the corridor towards the unsuspecting Harvester's back! Somehow, more of the creatures have appeared behind you! Their putrid fists upraised, they charge the servant of the Unborn God...but although he staggers under the impact of undead fists, he is as yet unharmed.
Sen-Jyu's expression sours. Stepping to one side, his blade is first seen to glint above the wounded korhorrag, then below and behind it, the distance being crossed through the creature. Sen-Jyu doesn't wait for it to fall before charging the two that accost the priest.
Harvester whirls with a great shout! his crossbow hurled towards his new assailants. The devout priest raises the grinning skull once more, and intones in his sepulchral voice, "By He Who Is To Come, I command you to return to the pit that spawned you!" The pair of zombie korhorrags reel away from him with low moans, and begin to shamble away.
The korhorrag stumble back from the flying crossbow and strongly presented skull, claws upraised as if to block an unseen glare. They peel off and turn the corner, one fleeing (slowly) to either side.
Ahoke whirls around, eyes blazing. "Get theeeeeeeeem!" She laughs wildly, thrusting herself past her companions, and starts to run down the corridor after the fleeing undead.
Turning the corner and pursuing the one that Ahoke did not claim as her own, Sen-Jyu's humming begins as he takes a similar relish in returning the korhorrag to their natural state of being. The gash that opens in Ichido-sama's silvery wake would have been quick and lethal for a human... not nearly so inconveniencing for this thing.
Harvester is very nearly run down by the crazed dwarf, then the samurai wannabe. He releases the holy symbol to drop against his chest and stoops to retrieve his scythe and torch and follow after Sen-Jyu.
Ahoke whirls around the corner, swinging her club through the air. It whistles past the head of one of the creatures, but doesn't make contact with its leathery hide. Ahoke looks disappointed, but starts preparing for her next strike.
Splinters of stone and wood pelt the undead korhorrag as it flees Ahoke's wrath as best it can, lurching down the corridor towards the blessed sanctity of darkness.
The second korhorrag pulls away from Ichida-sama with a disgusting sucking sound, lurching back towards the entryway and vanishing in the shadows.
Ichido-sama is seemingly repulsed by the disgusting nature of the flesh it had just tasted, and refuses to connect with the korhorrag a second time, not through Sen-Jyu's lack of trying, however.
Harvester charges down the mineshaft, towards the sounds of Sen-Jyu and his little friend. The torch is flung forward as he moves, the scythe swinging in a wide circle towards the undead critter. The blow is wild, and nearly decapitates Sen-Jyu once again!
Sen-Jyu ducks the incoming scythe, nimble little minx that he is.
Ahoke, not inconvenienced at all by the darkness, runs forward, the sound of her battlecry echoing throughout the corridor up ahead somewhere. There's a thud of club on flesh, a wild, deranged laugh from Ahoke, and then a louder, splintering sound as a body's bones are pulverized. Ahoke's laughter only gets louder, so one can guess that she was not the one that got crushed.
Harvester's approach seems to break the hold of holy energy over the zombie, and it rallies and swings - a swing nearly as wild as the scythe that missed it. Flecks of rot spatter Sen-Jyu's face as the hand goes past.
Sen-Jyu passes his sleeve over his face to remove the bit of yuck lodged there, then changes his humming to a minor key, something of a dirge for the korhorrag. However, the true sorrow lies in his inability to strike the thing.
Harvester's sweeps the scythe down low this time, narrowly missing the rotting creature. The blade skittes across the roof of the shaft as it comes across, this time nowhere near Sen-Jyu.
It must be something about this corridor...some hallucinogenic, refractive property that affects mortal and undead alike...or perhaps a curiously magnetic quality to the air, for it is the air that has been hit the most often in this affray. Such as now, as the rotting corpse cleaves it with a stinking fist.
Another kiai bursts from Sen-Jyu's throat, and the sword lashes out on a horizontal plane, biting deep into the skull of the korhorrag, a sickening shower of bone and a variety of tissue spattered. However, it does not cleave through fully, and in withdrawing Ichido-sama from the braincase, Sen-Jyu is horrified to see the thing still... animate.
'Clearly not 'Night of the Living Dead' zombies.
Even as Ichido-sama slices deeply into the skull of the undead abomination, so does the Harvester's scythe follow, completing the cut neatly, brain and goo flying with the top of its head now rolling across the ground. It crumples in place. Harvester mutters to himself as he stoops to retrieve his torch yet again. "Where's Ahoke??" he demands of Sen-Jyu.
As if in answer of that question, Ahoke's laughter can still be heard floating out of the darkness of the corridor that she chased one of the korhorrag into.
The humming softens to a single note, and Sen-Jyu smiles wanly at his companion, the scythe-wielding maniac. "... one guess, and one guess only," he murmurs.
Harvester frowns slightly, "She's dead and her ghost haunts these halls like an insane, very loud, happy apparition?"
Ahoke stops laughing, and there is a brief moment of silence, before she says, "What do you mean, finish the job?"
Sen-Jyu shrugs, "Close enough." He begins to walk in the direction of the dwarf's voice, though he stays within thirty feet of the light.
Harvester blinks once as he hears Ahoke speak, then turns to follow after Sen-Jyu. "Who the hells is she talking to?"
Ahoke starts laughing again. "Glad to do it, korhorrag scum! If you didn't smell so damned bad, I'd have your haunch for supper."
Sen-Jyu clears his throat discreetly, "I think she's hungry," he hazards.
Harvester continues moving forward with Sen-Jyu, albeit cautiously. He calls out in a singsong voice, "Ahooooke.... we're coming, Ahokeeee... please don't eeeeeeat ussssssss.... We have foooooood...."
As you approach the sound of Ahoke's voice, the first thing you notice is a sickening stench wafting around. It's unlike any smell in the entire world... the smell of huge amounts of decay and rotting flesh and vomit and excrement all mixed together, and left down here in one of the mineshafts for months. Ahoke is standing there in the center of the corridor, clenching her great club. She is staring at a door that is made of copper, that has a crushed corpse of a korhorrag dripping off of it in big chunks and gobbets. She is laughing, and seemingly fighting off the wave of her berserker rage. "Not yet, wolverine... not yet time to come out and play," she croons to herself, "But soon." She seems oblivious to the stench, which is, to say the least, overpowering.
Sen-Jyu slows that he might swipe his blade's length across a patch of fabric... something he'll need to have cleaned when they leave the caves.
The overwhelming stench slams into the priest like a ton of bricks from a condemned outhouse. His eyes water, knees grown weak as he sags downward, ever downward, his head swimming, spinning, hands clenching across his mouth as torch and scythe slip unheeded to the ground. The cleric swiftly follows, ending on hands and knees, his stomach roiling, surging, his last meal flinging up and out in a violent spray.
Harvester has become quite sick.
Sen-Jyu sniffs, humming dourly at this general unpleasantness. "... I feel like I need a bath," he confides.
"Vengeance? Your kind doesn't deserve vengeance," Ahoke says, chidingly, to the copper door. "So shut your yap..." she turns, confused at this latest sound. "Huh? What's wrong with him?" she asks Sen-Jyu accusingly.
Sen-Jyu looks past Ahoke to the copper door bestrewn with mashed korhorrag. "Your taste in interior decor," he answers, nose wrinkled faintly.
The stench seems to recede - is what caused it going away, or is it merely battering your nasal passages into submission? It is difficult to tell.
Ahoke laughs again, almost dancing with her joy. "You should have seen it, as the club mashed it up against the door. Now /that/ was a satisfying feeling. But I don't think the korhorrag on the other side of the door are happy with us. Or at least, the one that keeps /yapping/ at me isn't," she says, turning to stare back at the door with her more customary scowl.
"-Other- side?" asks Sen-Jyu, looking at Ahoke with something which could be skepticism or inquiry. "I don't hear anything."
Ahoke points at the door, nodding. "Yes. Generally, doors lead through to the other side. And it stopped yapping when you two got here. It was blathering on about us being tools for its vengeance, or something like that. /I/ say we go kill him for his impudence. Korhorrag scum."
Harvester's stomach still pumps and quivers, but has (alas!) emptied itself fully. The back of his hand wipes across his mouth and he flings the droplets away with a flick of his wirst. A hand reaches out blindly, for the scythe and wall, and both are used to crawl upwards, to his feet. His face is pale, ashen, tracks of tears in the dust quickly drying into a thin crust. Knees nearly buckle as he takes in hand the torch. "Sh-t." comes the ragged, weak word.
Sen-Jyu digs something out of his clothing, and as he approaches the Harvester to help the priest to his feet, he offers two beads of wax out with his other hand. "Noseplugs?" he asks helpfully.
Ahoke coughs, turning to Harvester. "They're smelly bastards, aren't they?" she says, getting a grip on her emotions enough to be sympathetic. "I can't think of how many times that they made me sick when I was growing up and learning to fight them... and we weren't trapped underground with them then."
Harvester waves a weak hand at Sen-Jyu as he whispers. "Can't smell diddly now.... just gimme a minute or ten..."
Sen-Jyu nods and shrugs a bit, then tugs his waterskin free from its knotted strap, offering it out to the Harvester. "To clean the taste away," he says, then adds, "but please. No backwash."
Ahoke moves away from the door, approaching the other two. Lowering her
voice so that it doesn't carry, she says, "They're waiting for us on the other side of the door, or at least, one is. Do you go through, possibly into a trap, or do we take our chances with another corridor somewhere?"
Harvester's head snaps up and he looks around, "Wha...." He does not appear to hear Sen-Jyu. A hand rises to silence his companions and he speaks softly, "Now _I'm_ hearing someone I've not heard in a rat's age..."
Ahoke raises her eyebrows at Harvester. "Huh?"
Harvester sticks his pinky in his ear and jiggles it, then listens once more.
Ahoke pats Harvester on the shoulder, shooting a worried look at Sen-Jyu. "Well, there's nothing for it but to slog through. Are you two prepared for battle?" She ohs, and moves up, looking at the korhorrag's crushed skull.
Harvester says simply, "No." Indeed, it appears difficult for him to lift his scythe easily, thought his strength appears to slowly return.
Ahoke starts picking through the rotted flesh of the creature's crushed skull and brain, getting chunks of its gore all over her stubby fingers. "Hmm," she says, casually, "There isn't a shard in /this/ one. Apparently not every freak of nature around here has a shard in its brain, then."
"Shall we rest a little further back, or..." Sen-Jyu watches the Harvester for a few seconds, then asks, "... would you rather go back topside, let Ahoke and I continue?"
Harvester shakes his head, then grabs his own waterskin. A measure is squirted into his mouth and he swishes, then spits to one side. "GAHk! That's a horrible taste. Let's go in just a sec..."
Before his waterskin is returned, Sen-Jyu takes a swallow of water from it as well. "Mmm. All right, if you feel well enough."
Ahoke curls her upper lip in disgust, and wipes the gore from her hand onto the wall. "I don't know how these things have the courage to live," she mutters. "If /I/ had to wake up smelling like that every day, I think I'd have someone club me to death."
Harvester says, "Their souls are trapped, Ahoke, within the dead flesh. There is no choice for them. The path was chosen by another - one with no respect for the Cycle.""
Ahoke glances at Harvester. "The live ones smell worse than the dead ones, Harv. Just to prepare you. They're just naturally disgusting."
Harvester looks at Ahoke, then at Sen-Jyu. "Mebbe you better give me the damn noseplugs after all..."
Ahoke points to the door. "There's some live ones on the other side. That's what made you vomit... unless you're pregnant," she says, with her usual dry sense of humor. She grins, then. "And I'm just guessing that it's not that."
Ahoke walks up to the door, cocking her head to listen. She shrugs. "Hmmph," she mutters. She turns, to watch the other two.
Sen-Jyu steps behind Ahoke, listening as well. After a few seconds, he asks, "Is the voice still speaking?"
Harvester grunts and takes the waxen plugs, and shoves them into his nose. His voice sounds high and nasal. "Yoo said there's some on the other side?"
Ahoke shakes her head. "No. It was happy to taunt me for a couple of minutes, no doubt to shake my confidence. But it's quiet now. Are we ready to go in and probably get killed by an entire flock of them?"
"You seem gleeful about this suggestion," Sen-Jyu says to the dwarf, one brow raised ever-so-slightly.
Harvester rubs his nose and looks at Sen-Jyu suspiciously. "Where'd you have these things?!" Then, he drops the torch, extinguishing it before putting it away. He begins to incant.
Ahoke bares her teeth in a grin. "Eh, I'd prefer to kill a flock of /them/ instead." She peers at Harvester then, hand poised to open the door.
Harvester says, "Let's go. Come on. I'm on a schedule here..."
"Are we ready?" Ahoke's whisper does nothing to conceal her eagerness and bloodlust.
Ahoke puts her shoulder into the door, but it is solid, and doesn't budge. She scowls at it, twisting her stocky dwarven body so that she can batter it from a different positino.
Harvester says, "Maybe it's a 'pull', Ahoke, and not a 'push'?"
Sen-Jyu readies his sword, as if the door itself would lash out at him. Tip of the tongue placed just behind his front teeth, he tastes the vibration of his hum and finds it to his liking.
Ahoke bounces off the door again, though this time she seems to hit it more solidly.
Doing what he can to find a 'clean spot' where he can apply pressure, Sen-Jyu helps the dwarf to force the door.
The dwarf slams her shoulder once more into the door, a fraction of a second before the other two - and with a rotted splintering of wood, whatever held the door shut gives way, sending the other two stumbling as the door is not where they expect it to be.
Beyond, the scythe feebly lights part of a large, rectangular room - seemingly empty, even to Ahoke and Sen-Jyu's keener vision.
The walls of the room are carved - the ones near the door show a dragon/lizard god arriving, seemingly emerging from the stone itself.
Harvester grabs his companions arms as he draws back, "Hold on..." he whispers, pointing at a large piece of wood, that's nowhere near the door. "That shoulda been on the door... but there's only a splinter..." His hands clench on the scythe as he looks about.
Ahoke glances at the piece of wood. "What?"
Sen-Jyu looks at the wood, then at the cleric. "-What-?" he whispers.
Indeed, there is a heavy piece of wood - one that might be used to bar a door such as the one you have just entered - yet curiously, it was not used to do so. A tiny splinter of wood, no more than a foot long before its sundering, was used for the job instead.
Harvester points at the heavy piece of wood. "That," he now points at the door. "Should have been there. But it is miles away...." And now he points at a rotten sliver of wood. "That was, instead..."
Ahoke smiles grimly at them. "I /told/ you that someone was on the other side. He wants us to come so that he can use us as tools for his vengeance. /I/ say that we spatter his brains against the wall, what do you say?"
"-Must- your sense of hostility be directed at spattering brains on walls?" Sen-Jyu wonders aloud, though as his eyes return to the scene before them, it's improbable that he would care to hear an answer.
Harvester shrugs, very uneasy now, and still pale as he stomach gurgles a reminder of events recently passed. "Brains splattering on the walls is alright, so long as they're not _my_ brains being splattered.... feel free to lead the way..."
Ahoke laughs again, although she doesn't sound as crazed as she had earlier. "Spattered brains on walls are brains not being used to try to kill me. And sure, I'll lead the way," she says, walking into the center of the room and peering around. "Looks like we have three choices. Left passage, right passage, and middle passage, over there on the other side.
Harvester mutters, "Will it be the Lady, or the tiger, or the Tarrasque..."
Sen-Jyu steps in after Ahoke, peering left, right and up as he does so before he steps into the center of the room.
Ahoke veers towards the left, shrugging. "It may as well be this direction as any," she says, "Because I'm sure we'll have to hit all three. Unless you hate going left?"
Harvester waves her on, "Flip a freakin coin, I don't care. Any direction but right or forward..."
Ahoke scowls at the walls. "I'm starting to hate this coppertop dragon. Seems like he's a bit powermad." She continues moving into the darkness, approaching the left passage that she had spotted from further back.
Sen-Jyu starts to move up to some of the carvings, examining them for a few moments before he returns to party order, nearing the left passage.
The passage from the left side of the room continues for about sixty feet, turns abrupty to the right, and dead-ends twenty feet further on.
Ahoke peers down the dead end. "Er, that was disappointing. Shall we go back?"
Sen-Jyu looks about for tracks in the passage, hopefully not ones left by a dwarf, a human, and a spirit-blood.
Ahoke moves around Sen-Jyu, and walks back out into the main room. "I'll wait out here," she tells them.
"Looks unused," confirms Sen-Jyu. "Let's move on."
Ahoke starts tramping towards the middle passage then, stroking the grip of her great club. "Soon," she whispers.
Harvester shrugs and turns to follow the others. "Last one we try'll be the right one."
Two passages remain - one to your left as you emerge from the dead end, and one straight ahead.
The passage stretches on into the rock, narrowing a bit, sloping upward - then turns to the left.
Ahoke pauses, letting the other two get closer to her. She says, in a low voice, "It's starting to slope upward up ahead... I think I see another room about 50 feet up there. Get ready to kill something."
Harvester looks at Ahoke, then laughs softly. "okay..."
Sen-Jyu hums his understanding, and Ichido-sama stands at attention.
Ahoke moves onward.
Harvester waves his light-bearing scythe slightly. "Yeah, let's sneak up on 'em," says he, softly...
Indeed, fifty feet further on is a large gallery hewn from the stone - too wide and long for Harvester's scythe to illuminate fully, even for Sen-Jyu's eyes. The far end is lost to even Ahoke's darkvision.
Harvester breathes, "Whooooo-eee.... could fit a whole _mess_ o'smelly lizard things in here...."
Ahoke sighs, looking disappointed. "They must be waiting to ambush us further back," she murmurs. "Maybe they wait just beyond the darkness?" Her inflection rises, a hopeful sound, and she squints to try to see better. Resolutely, she moves forward some more.
Sen-Jyu hisses once, sharp and quick and low. He also stops, reaching out with one snake-like arm to tap Ahoke alarmingly on the shoulder.
Ahoke pauses, looking over her shoulder at Sen-Jyu. "Hmm?"
Harvester stops just short of running into Sen-Jyu, and looks at him questioningly before looking around, and up.
Sen-Jyu crouches, his voice low as wind trickling through grass, "Ahead. Sound of stonework shifting."
Ahoke nods, peering through the darkness, and moving up a few more feet. "Yes..." she says, slowly. "THe other side of the room is completely caved in. Umm... let's go?"
Harvester moves forward, slowly, a hand reaching up to clasp a bead on his necklace.
Ahoke, actually, is starting to back off. "I don't like this," she mutters. "Nothing ever caves in on you up top, where /normal/ people live. Let's leave, before we're crushed under tons of rubble.."
"I never thought I'd hear a dwarf say those words..." Sen-Jyu comments wryly.
Harvester snorts, mimicking Ahoke, "I wanna splatter brains on walls..." Then, in his normal voice, "You okay, Kay?"
Ahoke shoots Sen-Jyu an odd look, but replies to Harvester instead, "I did not intend to have my brains splattered on walls by rocks, though."
Harvester laughs softly, and turns to follow yet again.
Ahoke moves back to the relative safety of the original chamber, and then approaches the third passage.
The trio troops back, away from the seemingly unstable rock...and Ahoke leads the way down the third corridor. Water glistens on the rough walls. After fifty feet, another turn, to the left this time.
Ahoke pauses partway down the passage. "Well, looks like we have three choices again," she murmurs. "Right, left, or straight. Start out right this time?"
Harvester waves, "Take the first one on the right, then." he offers, helpfully.
Ahoke mmphs, and nods, doing so.
You must be deep in the bowels of the mountain now - the passage continues for what must be sixty feet, before turning to the right.
Sen-Jyu agreeably follows the party.
Ahoke stops, grumbling. "I think that a bunch of rabbits made this place. Why do there have to be so many damned passages? There's a side passage up ahead that we should probably nose into, before following this one to its conclusion." She marches on, unless someone stops her, getting ready to take the side passage.
Harvester nods, "Yup. Sounds like a plan to me..."
Sen-Jyu doesn't argue with the rabid dwarven barbarian.
Ahoke sighs, peering down the side passage. "Yup. A four-way intersection, damned rabbits. I'll bet that we're going to get lost, at this rate. Luckily... we have food." She heads towards the four-way, stopping in the center of it.
Harvester scrapes his scythe along the wall that they've come, an arrow pointing back.
Glowing bits of scytheblade adhere momentarily to the wall, giving the arrow an eerie phosphorescence before it fades.
Ahoke peers around. "Dead end to the right, four way ahead, side passage over there." She sighs, turning to the other two. "Well, we can eliminate the right side, anyway."
Harvester says, "Let's keep to the right passages each time there's a choice."
Ahoke peers at Harvester. "But that's a dead end.."
Harvester nods, "Then assume we went in, came out and that," he points ahead, "would now be right."
Ahoke chuckles, and moves forward. "To the four-way it is, then."
Ahoke moves up, reciting as her keen dwarven vision helps her see, "Right dead ends, straight dead ends, but if we go left, there's another four-way. I guess we're going to have to go left," she says.
Harvester nods, "Right."
Ahoke peers at Harvester. "No, left." She marches to the left, and to the next four-way. "I think I know why people had to tithe to the dragon. Without his help, they'd be wandering around down here, completely lost, starving to death, and slowly going mad..." She stops. "To the left there's a t-intersection... but... straight ahead I can see light." She glances over at the other two. "It's firelight."
Harvester rolls his eyes at Ahoke, then nudges Sen-Jyu, whispering with a gesture at the dwarf, "Going mad...?"
Sen-Jyu narrows his eyes at the mention of firelight. "That it appears to be," he confirms for the not-so-visually-enhanced members of the party.
Harvester nods, "Then I'm guessing that's where we wanna go. Can you sneak closer, get a look without them getting a look or hear of you?" He asks quietly, of course.
Ahoke hehs. "I'm not so good at stealth... maybe one of you should do the sneaking."
Sen-Jyu grins at the suggestion. "Okay," he says, starting to move forward.
Harvester almost strangles as he stifles the laugh, and waves the others down. "Sssh..." He waits for Sen-Jyu to return or scream like a girl.
Popping out of the shadow near the group, Sen-Jyu smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "Hmm... well, if I were to judge correctly, we've found what we're looking for." He inhales, then continues, a bit gleeful for his discovery.
"It's a bowl, an offering bowl. The fire's bluish-red, and the bowl must be about twice as high as Ahoke. Above it is the verdigrised statue of a dragon, with big, sapphire eyes, looking into the bowl. I couldn't see the entirety of the room with that light alone, though. Oh, and it smelled rather like korhorrag... but an old stench."
Harvester says, "The bowl.... it holds the fire?"
Sen-Jyu nods sharply. "Yes, indeed."
Harvester exhales softly, "Well then, what're we waiting for? An engraved invitation?"
Ahoke frowns, but continues towards the light. "Well, let's get it done, then," she grumbles. "It's not natural to have fire in bowls," she says. "It smells too much like... supernatural sh-t. I don't suppose the children were tied up nearby, were they?"
"... not that I could see, no," laments Sen-Jyu. "However, there must be a door to the aerie in there."
Harvester nods slowly, moving forward. "Behind the statue, according to Thrommel's journal."
Red-blue light spills from the doorway to the room, drawing your eyes to the enormous stone dragon statue against the right-hand wall. It squats, wings outstretched, staring down at all in the room with sapphire eyes - eyes the size of a baby's head. They reflect the flickering flames into blue arcs that dance about the room.
In front of the statue is a copper bowl, ten feet across, filled with a leaping flame. it is raised five feet off the ground on a pedestal of red stone, and is eight feet high itself - untarnished, beautifully constructed, engraved with scenes of wise and enlightened draconic rule.
The far wall and the left wall of the room are lost in shadows.
Ahoke sticks her tongue out at the statue in what is a universal display of contempt. "Should we," she said, "Check out the corners of the room, or just go behind the statue?"
Sen-Jyu gestures up to the head of the dragon. "Not that greed has ever been one of my motivating factors, but it seems a shame that those sapphires should go to waste. If nothing else, the money could revitalize the town, perhaps allow for them to rely less upon the mines."
Harvester spreads his hands, "Clear the room first, so we don't get whacked from behind.... again." He moves to examine bowl ad statue though.
Ahoke smiles grimly. "I think if we gave the town something besides the mine to draw its wealth from, the mine owners would try to kill us in our sleep. I don't trust them."
Harvester points at the sapphires. "They closed and abandoned this mine. So the stones are free for the taking.
Ahoke nods. "Oh, I don't mind /us/ taking them."
Harvester grins. "Good. I've got expenses."
Sen-Jyu smiles to the enthusiasm of his companions. "So, what are our ideas for getting them down? After we scour this room first, of course."
Ahoke hmms. "Well... maybe we should come back for them /after/ we kill everything and save the children. They're awfully big to be toting around in a combat situation." She starts moving slowly and carefully forward, so that she can see deeper into the darkness.
Harvester's head jerks around at some unnoticed sound - and then /something/ bursts into the eerie firelight.
Bare ivory gleams as it scuttles across the floor at you, a twisted mess of bones entangled together in a deathly embrace. Three skulls peer from its shoulders, arms wave in the air as it lopes on six legs towards you.
You no longer wonder where the missing korhorrag bones were - now you know, and they are come to find you.
Harvester raises the symbol of the grinning skull on high, and speaks loudly, "Turn! Begone, foul creatures, return to your graves in the name of He who Is To Come!" The sounds of the enchantment and Ahoke's battlecries have stirred a half century of dust, however, that has risen up about the priest, causing him to cough in the darkness. The kohrkorrag ignore him.
Once Harvester has advanced enough to illuminate the korhorrag, Sen-Jyu cries out a kiai to waken the dead, and hopefully, to put them to rest as well. Ichido-sama raised high, the spirit-blood devours the distance between him and the unliving, the paper-thin edge sliding downward across the shoulder and chest of Sen-Jyu's chosen opponent. The blow is true, cutting deep, yet it reacts with only disdain, the sort that the undead show by simply existing.
The rotting stench of the korhorrag increases as they shift and flail about with their powerful fists - but their reactions are slow, and both dwarf and samurai easily evade their swings.
Ahoke shouts aloud again, jubilation and... something akin to joy in her tone. Her great club is drawn back once again, massive muscles rippling, and then comes down atop the creature's skull, crushing it. With nary a cry, it falls to the ground, and moves no more.
The sword twists in Sen-Jyu's hands as he needles his katana forward, both hands seeking to drive it through the korhorrag. The creature, slow as it is, isn't quite dead, and sidesteps his pathetic swordplay dismissively.
Harvester, seeing that he can advance no farther with his companions blocking the path before him, drops the torch to the ground and yanks out his crossbow. He raises it slowly, and aims as carefully as he might. A SNEEZE! as dust roiled up from the combat fills his nostrils, and the errant bolt whisks past Sen-Jyu's ear and thunks into the ceiling! "Oh dear..."
The korhorrag grunts, as if to mock Sen-Jyu's pathetic attack - but its own clumsy counterattack does no more than ruffle the hair on the spirit-blood's head.
Ahoke whirls around, her eyes agleam with the insane joy that a berserker feels in battle, and targets the second korhorrag. Her great club thuds into the creature's shoulder with a crunch, and its arm falls to the ground.
With savage grunts and growls, two shapes detach themselves from the darkness, lumbering down the corridor towards the unsuspecting Harvester's back! Somehow, more of the creatures have appeared behind you! Their putrid fists upraised, they charge the servant of the Unborn God...but although he staggers under the impact of undead fists, he is as yet unharmed.
Sen-Jyu's expression sours. Stepping to one side, his blade is first seen to glint above the wounded korhorrag, then below and behind it, the distance being crossed through the creature. Sen-Jyu doesn't wait for it to fall before charging the two that accost the priest.
Harvester whirls with a great shout! his crossbow hurled towards his new assailants. The devout priest raises the grinning skull once more, and intones in his sepulchral voice, "By He Who Is To Come, I command you to return to the pit that spawned you!" The pair of zombie korhorrags reel away from him with low moans, and begin to shamble away.
The korhorrag stumble back from the flying crossbow and strongly presented skull, claws upraised as if to block an unseen glare. They peel off and turn the corner, one fleeing (slowly) to either side.
Ahoke whirls around, eyes blazing. "Get theeeeeeeeem!" She laughs wildly, thrusting herself past her companions, and starts to run down the corridor after the fleeing undead.
Turning the corner and pursuing the one that Ahoke did not claim as her own, Sen-Jyu's humming begins as he takes a similar relish in returning the korhorrag to their natural state of being. The gash that opens in Ichido-sama's silvery wake would have been quick and lethal for a human... not nearly so inconveniencing for this thing.
Harvester is very nearly run down by the crazed dwarf, then the samurai wannabe. He releases the holy symbol to drop against his chest and stoops to retrieve his scythe and torch and follow after Sen-Jyu.
Ahoke whirls around the corner, swinging her club through the air. It whistles past the head of one of the creatures, but doesn't make contact with its leathery hide. Ahoke looks disappointed, but starts preparing for her next strike.
Splinters of stone and wood pelt the undead korhorrag as it flees Ahoke's wrath as best it can, lurching down the corridor towards the blessed sanctity of darkness.
The second korhorrag pulls away from Ichida-sama with a disgusting sucking sound, lurching back towards the entryway and vanishing in the shadows.
Ichido-sama is seemingly repulsed by the disgusting nature of the flesh it had just tasted, and refuses to connect with the korhorrag a second time, not through Sen-Jyu's lack of trying, however.
Harvester charges down the mineshaft, towards the sounds of Sen-Jyu and his little friend. The torch is flung forward as he moves, the scythe swinging in a wide circle towards the undead critter. The blow is wild, and nearly decapitates Sen-Jyu once again!
Sen-Jyu ducks the incoming scythe, nimble little minx that he is.
Ahoke, not inconvenienced at all by the darkness, runs forward, the sound of her battlecry echoing throughout the corridor up ahead somewhere. There's a thud of club on flesh, a wild, deranged laugh from Ahoke, and then a louder, splintering sound as a body's bones are pulverized. Ahoke's laughter only gets louder, so one can guess that she was not the one that got crushed.
Harvester's approach seems to break the hold of holy energy over the zombie, and it rallies and swings - a swing nearly as wild as the scythe that missed it. Flecks of rot spatter Sen-Jyu's face as the hand goes past.
Sen-Jyu passes his sleeve over his face to remove the bit of yuck lodged there, then changes his humming to a minor key, something of a dirge for the korhorrag. However, the true sorrow lies in his inability to strike the thing.
Harvester's sweeps the scythe down low this time, narrowly missing the rotting creature. The blade skittes across the roof of the shaft as it comes across, this time nowhere near Sen-Jyu.
It must be something about this corridor...some hallucinogenic, refractive property that affects mortal and undead alike...or perhaps a curiously magnetic quality to the air, for it is the air that has been hit the most often in this affray. Such as now, as the rotting corpse cleaves it with a stinking fist.
Another kiai bursts from Sen-Jyu's throat, and the sword lashes out on a horizontal plane, biting deep into the skull of the korhorrag, a sickening shower of bone and a variety of tissue spattered. However, it does not cleave through fully, and in withdrawing Ichido-sama from the braincase, Sen-Jyu is horrified to see the thing still... animate.
'Clearly not 'Night of the Living Dead' zombies.
Even as Ichido-sama slices deeply into the skull of the undead abomination, so does the Harvester's scythe follow, completing the cut neatly, brain and goo flying with the top of its head now rolling across the ground. It crumples in place. Harvester mutters to himself as he stoops to retrieve his torch yet again. "Where's Ahoke??" he demands of Sen-Jyu.
As if in answer of that question, Ahoke's laughter can still be heard floating out of the darkness of the corridor that she chased one of the korhorrag into.
The humming softens to a single note, and Sen-Jyu smiles wanly at his companion, the scythe-wielding maniac. "... one guess, and one guess only," he murmurs.
Harvester frowns slightly, "She's dead and her ghost haunts these halls like an insane, very loud, happy apparition?"
Ahoke stops laughing, and there is a brief moment of silence, before she says, "What do you mean, finish the job?"
Sen-Jyu shrugs, "Close enough." He begins to walk in the direction of the dwarf's voice, though he stays within thirty feet of the light.
Harvester blinks once as he hears Ahoke speak, then turns to follow after Sen-Jyu. "Who the hells is she talking to?"
Ahoke starts laughing again. "Glad to do it, korhorrag scum! If you didn't smell so damned bad, I'd have your haunch for supper."
Sen-Jyu clears his throat discreetly, "I think she's hungry," he hazards.
Harvester continues moving forward with Sen-Jyu, albeit cautiously. He calls out in a singsong voice, "Ahooooke.... we're coming, Ahokeeee... please don't eeeeeeat ussssssss.... We have foooooood...."
As you approach the sound of Ahoke's voice, the first thing you notice is a sickening stench wafting around. It's unlike any smell in the entire world... the smell of huge amounts of decay and rotting flesh and vomit and excrement all mixed together, and left down here in one of the mineshafts for months. Ahoke is standing there in the center of the corridor, clenching her great club. She is staring at a door that is made of copper, that has a crushed corpse of a korhorrag dripping off of it in big chunks and gobbets. She is laughing, and seemingly fighting off the wave of her berserker rage. "Not yet, wolverine... not yet time to come out and play," she croons to herself, "But soon." She seems oblivious to the stench, which is, to say the least, overpowering.
Sen-Jyu slows that he might swipe his blade's length across a patch of fabric... something he'll need to have cleaned when they leave the caves.
The overwhelming stench slams into the priest like a ton of bricks from a condemned outhouse. His eyes water, knees grown weak as he sags downward, ever downward, his head swimming, spinning, hands clenching across his mouth as torch and scythe slip unheeded to the ground. The cleric swiftly follows, ending on hands and knees, his stomach roiling, surging, his last meal flinging up and out in a violent spray.
Harvester has become quite sick.
Sen-Jyu sniffs, humming dourly at this general unpleasantness. "... I feel like I need a bath," he confides.
"Vengeance? Your kind doesn't deserve vengeance," Ahoke says, chidingly, to the copper door. "So shut your yap..." she turns, confused at this latest sound. "Huh? What's wrong with him?" she asks Sen-Jyu accusingly.
Sen-Jyu looks past Ahoke to the copper door bestrewn with mashed korhorrag. "Your taste in interior decor," he answers, nose wrinkled faintly.
The stench seems to recede - is what caused it going away, or is it merely battering your nasal passages into submission? It is difficult to tell.
Ahoke laughs again, almost dancing with her joy. "You should have seen it, as the club mashed it up against the door. Now /that/ was a satisfying feeling. But I don't think the korhorrag on the other side of the door are happy with us. Or at least, the one that keeps /yapping/ at me isn't," she says, turning to stare back at the door with her more customary scowl.
"-Other- side?" asks Sen-Jyu, looking at Ahoke with something which could be skepticism or inquiry. "I don't hear anything."
Ahoke points at the door, nodding. "Yes. Generally, doors lead through to the other side. And it stopped yapping when you two got here. It was blathering on about us being tools for its vengeance, or something like that. /I/ say we go kill him for his impudence. Korhorrag scum."
Harvester's stomach still pumps and quivers, but has (alas!) emptied itself fully. The back of his hand wipes across his mouth and he flings the droplets away with a flick of his wirst. A hand reaches out blindly, for the scythe and wall, and both are used to crawl upwards, to his feet. His face is pale, ashen, tracks of tears in the dust quickly drying into a thin crust. Knees nearly buckle as he takes in hand the torch. "Sh-t." comes the ragged, weak word.
Sen-Jyu digs something out of his clothing, and as he approaches the Harvester to help the priest to his feet, he offers two beads of wax out with his other hand. "Noseplugs?" he asks helpfully.
Ahoke coughs, turning to Harvester. "They're smelly bastards, aren't they?" she says, getting a grip on her emotions enough to be sympathetic. "I can't think of how many times that they made me sick when I was growing up and learning to fight them... and we weren't trapped underground with them then."
Harvester waves a weak hand at Sen-Jyu as he whispers. "Can't smell diddly now.... just gimme a minute or ten..."
Sen-Jyu nods and shrugs a bit, then tugs his waterskin free from its knotted strap, offering it out to the Harvester. "To clean the taste away," he says, then adds, "but please. No backwash."
Ahoke moves away from the door, approaching the other two. Lowering her
voice so that it doesn't carry, she says, "They're waiting for us on the other side of the door, or at least, one is. Do you go through, possibly into a trap, or do we take our chances with another corridor somewhere?"
Harvester's head snaps up and he looks around, "Wha...." He does not appear to hear Sen-Jyu. A hand rises to silence his companions and he speaks softly, "Now _I'm_ hearing someone I've not heard in a rat's age..."
Ahoke raises her eyebrows at Harvester. "Huh?"
Harvester sticks his pinky in his ear and jiggles it, then listens once more.
Ahoke pats Harvester on the shoulder, shooting a worried look at Sen-Jyu. "Well, there's nothing for it but to slog through. Are you two prepared for battle?" She ohs, and moves up, looking at the korhorrag's crushed skull.
Harvester says simply, "No." Indeed, it appears difficult for him to lift his scythe easily, thought his strength appears to slowly return.
Ahoke starts picking through the rotted flesh of the creature's crushed skull and brain, getting chunks of its gore all over her stubby fingers. "Hmm," she says, casually, "There isn't a shard in /this/ one. Apparently not every freak of nature around here has a shard in its brain, then."
"Shall we rest a little further back, or..." Sen-Jyu watches the Harvester for a few seconds, then asks, "... would you rather go back topside, let Ahoke and I continue?"
Harvester shakes his head, then grabs his own waterskin. A measure is squirted into his mouth and he swishes, then spits to one side. "GAHk! That's a horrible taste. Let's go in just a sec..."
Before his waterskin is returned, Sen-Jyu takes a swallow of water from it as well. "Mmm. All right, if you feel well enough."
Ahoke curls her upper lip in disgust, and wipes the gore from her hand onto the wall. "I don't know how these things have the courage to live," she mutters. "If /I/ had to wake up smelling like that every day, I think I'd have someone club me to death."
Harvester says, "Their souls are trapped, Ahoke, within the dead flesh. There is no choice for them. The path was chosen by another - one with no respect for the Cycle.""
Ahoke glances at Harvester. "The live ones smell worse than the dead ones, Harv. Just to prepare you. They're just naturally disgusting."
Harvester looks at Ahoke, then at Sen-Jyu. "Mebbe you better give me the damn noseplugs after all..."
Ahoke points to the door. "There's some live ones on the other side. That's what made you vomit... unless you're pregnant," she says, with her usual dry sense of humor. She grins, then. "And I'm just guessing that it's not that."
Ahoke walks up to the door, cocking her head to listen. She shrugs. "Hmmph," she mutters. She turns, to watch the other two.
Sen-Jyu steps behind Ahoke, listening as well. After a few seconds, he asks, "Is the voice still speaking?"
Harvester grunts and takes the waxen plugs, and shoves them into his nose. His voice sounds high and nasal. "Yoo said there's some on the other side?"
Ahoke shakes her head. "No. It was happy to taunt me for a couple of minutes, no doubt to shake my confidence. But it's quiet now. Are we ready to go in and probably get killed by an entire flock of them?"
"You seem gleeful about this suggestion," Sen-Jyu says to the dwarf, one brow raised ever-so-slightly.
Harvester rubs his nose and looks at Sen-Jyu suspiciously. "Where'd you have these things?!" Then, he drops the torch, extinguishing it before putting it away. He begins to incant.
Ahoke bares her teeth in a grin. "Eh, I'd prefer to kill a flock of /them/ instead." She peers at Harvester then, hand poised to open the door.
Harvester says, "Let's go. Come on. I'm on a schedule here..."
"Are we ready?" Ahoke's whisper does nothing to conceal her eagerness and bloodlust.
Ahoke puts her shoulder into the door, but it is solid, and doesn't budge. She scowls at it, twisting her stocky dwarven body so that she can batter it from a different positino.
Harvester says, "Maybe it's a 'pull', Ahoke, and not a 'push'?"
Sen-Jyu readies his sword, as if the door itself would lash out at him. Tip of the tongue placed just behind his front teeth, he tastes the vibration of his hum and finds it to his liking.
Ahoke bounces off the door again, though this time she seems to hit it more solidly.
Doing what he can to find a 'clean spot' where he can apply pressure, Sen-Jyu helps the dwarf to force the door.
The dwarf slams her shoulder once more into the door, a fraction of a second before the other two - and with a rotted splintering of wood, whatever held the door shut gives way, sending the other two stumbling as the door is not where they expect it to be.
Beyond, the scythe feebly lights part of a large, rectangular room - seemingly empty, even to Ahoke and Sen-Jyu's keener vision.
The walls of the room are carved - the ones near the door show a dragon/lizard god arriving, seemingly emerging from the stone itself.
Harvester grabs his companions arms as he draws back, "Hold on..." he whispers, pointing at a large piece of wood, that's nowhere near the door. "That shoulda been on the door... but there's only a splinter..." His hands clench on the scythe as he looks about.
Ahoke glances at the piece of wood. "What?"
Sen-Jyu looks at the wood, then at the cleric. "-What-?" he whispers.
Indeed, there is a heavy piece of wood - one that might be used to bar a door such as the one you have just entered - yet curiously, it was not used to do so. A tiny splinter of wood, no more than a foot long before its sundering, was used for the job instead.
Harvester points at the heavy piece of wood. "That," he now points at the door. "Should have been there. But it is miles away...." And now he points at a rotten sliver of wood. "That was, instead..."
Ahoke smiles grimly at them. "I /told/ you that someone was on the other side. He wants us to come so that he can use us as tools for his vengeance. /I/ say that we spatter his brains against the wall, what do you say?"
"-Must- your sense of hostility be directed at spattering brains on walls?" Sen-Jyu wonders aloud, though as his eyes return to the scene before them, it's improbable that he would care to hear an answer.
Harvester shrugs, very uneasy now, and still pale as he stomach gurgles a reminder of events recently passed. "Brains splattering on the walls is alright, so long as they're not _my_ brains being splattered.... feel free to lead the way..."
Ahoke laughs again, although she doesn't sound as crazed as she had earlier. "Spattered brains on walls are brains not being used to try to kill me. And sure, I'll lead the way," she says, walking into the center of the room and peering around. "Looks like we have three choices. Left passage, right passage, and middle passage, over there on the other side.
Harvester mutters, "Will it be the Lady, or the tiger, or the Tarrasque..."
Sen-Jyu steps in after Ahoke, peering left, right and up as he does so before he steps into the center of the room.
Ahoke veers towards the left, shrugging. "It may as well be this direction as any," she says, "Because I'm sure we'll have to hit all three. Unless you hate going left?"
Harvester waves her on, "Flip a freakin coin, I don't care. Any direction but right or forward..."
Ahoke scowls at the walls. "I'm starting to hate this coppertop dragon. Seems like he's a bit powermad." She continues moving into the darkness, approaching the left passage that she had spotted from further back.
Sen-Jyu starts to move up to some of the carvings, examining them for a few moments before he returns to party order, nearing the left passage.
The passage from the left side of the room continues for about sixty feet, turns abrupty to the right, and dead-ends twenty feet further on.
Ahoke peers down the dead end. "Er, that was disappointing. Shall we go back?"
Sen-Jyu looks about for tracks in the passage, hopefully not ones left by a dwarf, a human, and a spirit-blood.
Ahoke moves around Sen-Jyu, and walks back out into the main room. "I'll wait out here," she tells them.
"Looks unused," confirms Sen-Jyu. "Let's move on."
Ahoke starts tramping towards the middle passage then, stroking the grip of her great club. "Soon," she whispers.
Harvester shrugs and turns to follow the others. "Last one we try'll be the right one."
Two passages remain - one to your left as you emerge from the dead end, and one straight ahead.
The passage stretches on into the rock, narrowing a bit, sloping upward - then turns to the left.
Ahoke pauses, letting the other two get closer to her. She says, in a low voice, "It's starting to slope upward up ahead... I think I see another room about 50 feet up there. Get ready to kill something."
Harvester looks at Ahoke, then laughs softly. "okay..."
Sen-Jyu hums his understanding, and Ichido-sama stands at attention.
Ahoke moves onward.
Harvester waves his light-bearing scythe slightly. "Yeah, let's sneak up on 'em," says he, softly...
Indeed, fifty feet further on is a large gallery hewn from the stone - too wide and long for Harvester's scythe to illuminate fully, even for Sen-Jyu's eyes. The far end is lost to even Ahoke's darkvision.
Harvester breathes, "Whooooo-eee.... could fit a whole _mess_ o'smelly lizard things in here...."
Ahoke sighs, looking disappointed. "They must be waiting to ambush us further back," she murmurs. "Maybe they wait just beyond the darkness?" Her inflection rises, a hopeful sound, and she squints to try to see better. Resolutely, she moves forward some more.
Sen-Jyu hisses once, sharp and quick and low. He also stops, reaching out with one snake-like arm to tap Ahoke alarmingly on the shoulder.
Ahoke pauses, looking over her shoulder at Sen-Jyu. "Hmm?"
Harvester stops just short of running into Sen-Jyu, and looks at him questioningly before looking around, and up.
Sen-Jyu crouches, his voice low as wind trickling through grass, "Ahead. Sound of stonework shifting."
Ahoke nods, peering through the darkness, and moving up a few more feet. "Yes..." she says, slowly. "THe other side of the room is completely caved in. Umm... let's go?"
Harvester moves forward, slowly, a hand reaching up to clasp a bead on his necklace.
Ahoke, actually, is starting to back off. "I don't like this," she mutters. "Nothing ever caves in on you up top, where /normal/ people live. Let's leave, before we're crushed under tons of rubble.."
"I never thought I'd hear a dwarf say those words..." Sen-Jyu comments wryly.
Harvester snorts, mimicking Ahoke, "I wanna splatter brains on walls..." Then, in his normal voice, "You okay, Kay?"
Ahoke shoots Sen-Jyu an odd look, but replies to Harvester instead, "I did not intend to have my brains splattered on walls by rocks, though."
Harvester laughs softly, and turns to follow yet again.
Ahoke moves back to the relative safety of the original chamber, and then approaches the third passage.
The trio troops back, away from the seemingly unstable rock...and Ahoke leads the way down the third corridor. Water glistens on the rough walls. After fifty feet, another turn, to the left this time.
Ahoke pauses partway down the passage. "Well, looks like we have three choices again," she murmurs. "Right, left, or straight. Start out right this time?"
Harvester waves, "Take the first one on the right, then." he offers, helpfully.
Ahoke mmphs, and nods, doing so.
You must be deep in the bowels of the mountain now - the passage continues for what must be sixty feet, before turning to the right.
Sen-Jyu agreeably follows the party.
Ahoke stops, grumbling. "I think that a bunch of rabbits made this place. Why do there have to be so many damned passages? There's a side passage up ahead that we should probably nose into, before following this one to its conclusion." She marches on, unless someone stops her, getting ready to take the side passage.
Harvester nods, "Yup. Sounds like a plan to me..."
Sen-Jyu doesn't argue with the rabid dwarven barbarian.
Ahoke sighs, peering down the side passage. "Yup. A four-way intersection, damned rabbits. I'll bet that we're going to get lost, at this rate. Luckily... we have food." She heads towards the four-way, stopping in the center of it.
Harvester scrapes his scythe along the wall that they've come, an arrow pointing back.
Glowing bits of scytheblade adhere momentarily to the wall, giving the arrow an eerie phosphorescence before it fades.
Ahoke peers around. "Dead end to the right, four way ahead, side passage over there." She sighs, turning to the other two. "Well, we can eliminate the right side, anyway."
Harvester says, "Let's keep to the right passages each time there's a choice."
Ahoke peers at Harvester. "But that's a dead end.."
Harvester nods, "Then assume we went in, came out and that," he points ahead, "would now be right."
Ahoke chuckles, and moves forward. "To the four-way it is, then."
Ahoke moves up, reciting as her keen dwarven vision helps her see, "Right dead ends, straight dead ends, but if we go left, there's another four-way. I guess we're going to have to go left," she says.
Harvester nods, "Right."
Ahoke peers at Harvester. "No, left." She marches to the left, and to the next four-way. "I think I know why people had to tithe to the dragon. Without his help, they'd be wandering around down here, completely lost, starving to death, and slowly going mad..." She stops. "To the left there's a t-intersection... but... straight ahead I can see light." She glances over at the other two. "It's firelight."
Harvester rolls his eyes at Ahoke, then nudges Sen-Jyu, whispering with a gesture at the dwarf, "Going mad...?"
Sen-Jyu narrows his eyes at the mention of firelight. "That it appears to be," he confirms for the not-so-visually-enhanced members of the party.
Harvester nods, "Then I'm guessing that's where we wanna go. Can you sneak closer, get a look without them getting a look or hear of you?" He asks quietly, of course.
Ahoke hehs. "I'm not so good at stealth... maybe one of you should do the sneaking."
Sen-Jyu grins at the suggestion. "Okay," he says, starting to move forward.
Harvester almost strangles as he stifles the laugh, and waves the others down. "Sssh..." He waits for Sen-Jyu to return or scream like a girl.
Popping out of the shadow near the group, Sen-Jyu smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "Hmm... well, if I were to judge correctly, we've found what we're looking for." He inhales, then continues, a bit gleeful for his discovery.
"It's a bowl, an offering bowl. The fire's bluish-red, and the bowl must be about twice as high as Ahoke. Above it is the verdigrised statue of a dragon, with big, sapphire eyes, looking into the bowl. I couldn't see the entirety of the room with that light alone, though. Oh, and it smelled rather like korhorrag... but an old stench."
Harvester says, "The bowl.... it holds the fire?"
Sen-Jyu nods sharply. "Yes, indeed."
Harvester exhales softly, "Well then, what're we waiting for? An engraved invitation?"
Ahoke frowns, but continues towards the light. "Well, let's get it done, then," she grumbles. "It's not natural to have fire in bowls," she says. "It smells too much like... supernatural sh-t. I don't suppose the children were tied up nearby, were they?"
"... not that I could see, no," laments Sen-Jyu. "However, there must be a door to the aerie in there."
Harvester nods slowly, moving forward. "Behind the statue, according to Thrommel's journal."
Red-blue light spills from the doorway to the room, drawing your eyes to the enormous stone dragon statue against the right-hand wall. It squats, wings outstretched, staring down at all in the room with sapphire eyes - eyes the size of a baby's head. They reflect the flickering flames into blue arcs that dance about the room.
In front of the statue is a copper bowl, ten feet across, filled with a leaping flame. it is raised five feet off the ground on a pedestal of red stone, and is eight feet high itself - untarnished, beautifully constructed, engraved with scenes of wise and enlightened draconic rule.
The far wall and the left wall of the room are lost in shadows.
Ahoke sticks her tongue out at the statue in what is a universal display of contempt. "Should we," she said, "Check out the corners of the room, or just go behind the statue?"
Sen-Jyu gestures up to the head of the dragon. "Not that greed has ever been one of my motivating factors, but it seems a shame that those sapphires should go to waste. If nothing else, the money could revitalize the town, perhaps allow for them to rely less upon the mines."
Harvester spreads his hands, "Clear the room first, so we don't get whacked from behind.... again." He moves to examine bowl ad statue though.
Ahoke smiles grimly. "I think if we gave the town something besides the mine to draw its wealth from, the mine owners would try to kill us in our sleep. I don't trust them."
Harvester points at the sapphires. "They closed and abandoned this mine. So the stones are free for the taking.
Ahoke nods. "Oh, I don't mind /us/ taking them."
Harvester grins. "Good. I've got expenses."
Sen-Jyu smiles to the enthusiasm of his companions. "So, what are our ideas for getting them down? After we scour this room first, of course."
Ahoke hmms. "Well... maybe we should come back for them /after/ we kill everything and save the children. They're awfully big to be toting around in a combat situation." She starts moving slowly and carefully forward, so that she can see deeper into the darkness.
Harvester's head jerks around at some unnoticed sound - and then /something/ bursts into the eerie firelight.
Bare ivory gleams as it scuttles across the floor at you, a twisted mess of bones entangled together in a deathly embrace. Three skulls peer from its shoulders, arms wave in the air as it lopes on six legs towards you.
You no longer wonder where the missing korhorrag bones were - now you know, and they are come to find you.
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